Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - FBI Agent Exposes The Dark Side Of Social Media

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

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He screams. Just give me one more opportunity. You will deny Christ, prepare to die. The theme for this episode is the dark side of social media. Hello, MacCox. Hi. Hello. It's good to see. I think I forgot to say hello to you last time.

Yeah. We heard about it. I know. Absolutely. It's fun last night. Me, you and Colby, we got our ladies together. We went out on the town, painted the town red. I want to mention something that happened last night.

Uh-oh. Because I've been thinking about this. All right. Lay it on me. Which was that you've been approached. You said you'd been approached multiple times saying, do you really think this guy has changed? Yeah. At all.

And then your wife, then Lisa. She can I say Lisa? That's okay. She's not in the witness protection program. Okay. And then she said that she recalled a story that I told about when I was younger. When I was in college, right? I was in college with a girlfriend.

We were living together. My mother used to have at least once a month we used to all have dinner. And we were at dinner and something had come up where my sister had lost her engagement ring. And she'd gotten a refund check from State Farm. And so let's say it was 10,000. And they were going out to buy another engagement ring. She lost her engagement ring. And so she had the check.

And my mother had asked her if they'd gotten the ring. And she said, no, Mom, you're not going to believe what happened. Now, this is my whole family. There's like 10 or 12 of us that are sitting around a big table at my mom's house. And she said, no, mom, you're not going to believe what happened. She said that her son, Jake, had mentioned it in front, mentioned that his mother had lost her engagement ring. They were going to buy another engagement ring. And the teacher in his class said, really, have your mother come in when she gets here? So when she came to pick him up,

she went in to go see the teacher. She says, is everything okay? And the teacher says, yeah, what kind of a cut was the ring you lost? And she told her what kind of cut it was. And she was, is this the ring? She was, oh, my gosh. My sister had somehow or another, taking it off, had fallen off her. I don't know what happened. But the teacher had found it in the parking lot and had placed it into lost and found. Got it. And to be clear, at this point of the story, she had received the check for 10 grand from the insurance company.

Correct. Had she negotiated the check at that point? No. Okay. Well, I don't know if she had, I think she had it. I don't know if she had deposited or not. I don't recall. But I know she'd already gotten the check and now she's got the ring back.

Yeah. And so I'm sitting at a table and I said, sweet. And I went, you've got the check and you got the ring back. That's like, that's great. And everyone at the table looks, my whole family looks at me like, what do you mean? I went, well, because you've got both of them. You get to keep the check and you got the ring. And she said, and my sister says, no, no, Matt, you don't understand.

She said, State Farm sent me the check to replace the ring so I could got another, got another, so I can get another ring. But I already have the ring. I went, no, exactly. They have no idea you got the ring back. You were 19? No, I was, I think it was probably 20, 21. Okay. And so she, so she's like, no, no, but Matt, and she starts to explain it again.

This is the early broken moral compass of a con artist. Of course. And I'm sitting there like, like looking and she explains it again. And I'm like, no, I understand. And now they're all trying to explain it like I'm dense. I'm like, no, I'm not the dense one here. I understand the concept. I'm saying, you got away with it.

Like it's perfect. You got 10 grand. And you don't have to spend it. It's a bonus. And. And so. Finally, they just, you know, they went on and on a little bit. And then I started realizing like, oh, okay.

And I remember sitting there thinking, wow, like, who are these? What's wrong with these people? They're the problem. Yeah. So anyway, so Lisa had mentioned that. And she said, and I thought, she said, I thought to myself that if that happened again today. Right. This is interesting.

You would, you'd obviously give the check back. or you see what would you would you do that again today? And I said, absolutely, I would keep the check today to this day. And I thought about that. I was like, why would I give the check back? Like it's, it's not harming anybody. It's, I'm taking, it's not an insurance company. I mean I have sympathy for an insurance company. I have no sympathy. I'm void. But for, yeah, for a banker and insurance companies, I like, I don't see that that point oh, oh, one percent of every customer, they'll be okay. Anyway, so I thought about that. I thought about it last night. Okay. And I was driving here this morning. I was driving and I thought, heavily on your heart. It was. It was because it was.

And I was thinking about it and I thought, you know, because I thought, does that make me like a, you know, a scum bag? Like, does that make me a bad person? Look at these 11 pages. This is what a data broker claims to know about you. Your addresses, phone numbers, even relatives names. And guess what? They're selling it.

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Try ORA free for 14 days at ORA.com slash Matt. In two weeks, they'll be scrubbing your information off broker's. sites. That's aura.com slash mat. And I was driving. I thought, well, wait a minute here. Like, remember the thing I told you about like the cell phone, bringing the cell phone back? Well, yeah. That was the follow-up question I had last night. It was, okay, so you would keep the ring and keep the money from the insurance company. You wouldn't tell anybody according to your current moral code as you explained it last night. Right. And my follow-up was, okay, well, if you found a wallet on the ground or $1,000 in it and some guy's driver's license, are you keeping that money? Are you turning in the wallet? What did you say? I said, no, because that's

actually happened last night I said well that actually happened but it's actually happened twice yeah we one we uh John Bozac had found a wallet and he put it in the drawer like what he put in the drawer and we thought he had returned it and so like a a month went by and jess goes hey what what's this she pulls it she goes what is this and I explained that Bozac had found a wallet and I go what's this and I called him I was like what are you doing and he's like what I said you're not going to return the wallet the guy's address is like a mile away Hey. Was there money in it?

Not one. I don't know what he had. I don't think there was probably any money in it. But even then. Credit cards. Credit cards. And I remember thinking, this guy's replaced everything by this point. It's been a month.

Anyway, Jess and I jumped in the car, drove there, just went and knocked on the door. The guy's wife answered, and she said, we got this wallet. And she was like, oh, my gosh, that's my husband. And she looked through it. Oh, thank you so much. He said, no problem. Got in the car and left.

Yeah. Then another time, Jess was walking. and she found a wallet. Looked the kid up on social media. He actually lives in our neighborhood. He actually had like an Instagram account where he'd lost like 80 pounds or something. You know, he was doing a little in shape thing. Found him, contacted him, gave him our address.

He came by and there were still money in the wallet. And then he wanted to give us money. And we were like, I'm not going to take any money. Here's your thing. But I was also thinking like, do you know. Okay, well, just as moral compass isn't in question here. No, no, no. Well, I'm getting up.

I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. So, and I was thinking to myself, like, do you know how many times since I've been out of prison? I've been driving and suddenly, like, cars are locking up in front of me. And I don't mean, I mean, like, there's 50 cars. Yeah. And they're locked.

They're swerving. They're this. And then, of course, when I get to the area that they were swerving, like some truckers tire blew out. And there's a tire in the middle of the road and people are swerving around. And they're swerving. I mean, people are multiple lanes. And I immediately pull off. Of course, I'm a Floridian.

So. I'm like, these motherfuckers, like these dumb asses, like 50, 60 people, nobody pulled over, like assholes. And I pull over, I jump out. I run in the middle of traffic, grab the tire and throw it out. Matter of fact, we were eating at five boy, or five boys. Five guys. We were eating five guys. Remember the ladder fell off the truck?

Oh, yeah. I was there with you. Yeah. And I was like, fuck, let me go get this ladder. And I run and I grabbed the ladder. And somebody ran over it before I even got to it. I remember that. threw it and I pulled it aside. I'm not taking it home. I'm not, you know, I threw it on the side of the road, got it out, because somebody's going to get hurt. Like somebody's going to. You were like a Marvel superhero. I was sitting there watching you like run into traffic. Yeah. And I don't need a new ladder. It's not because I'm thinking, hey, there's a good ladder there. Like I can sell this on email. Right. So I threw it out and I thought to myself, you know, like, listen, I'm like, I don't think I would have, I wouldn't have done any of those things prior to going to prison. Really? Okay. That's interesting. No. So before you went to prison, I want to drill down on this because this is interesting. You find that wallet on the

it's filled with cash. Before you went to prison, would you have returned to that wallet? No, I think I would have kept the cash, and I probably would have kept the ID because now I got this guy's ID. Like now I might be able to, this might be useful. Okay. Listen, when they caught me, of course, all the ideas I had already gotten, but I had actually found an ID. They found an, I got hit with an extra stolen identity because I had found an ID in an abandoned house that I bought and was fixing up, and I kept the ID. And this is, this is understanding that there's a metaphysical certainty you're going to get away with this crime. You're going to keep this cash and no one's going to know and nobody's going to get hurt. Like I was thinking,

oh, no, no, you mean, you mean prior to prior to prison. Now I feel like, I'm just wondering how much of it now is you do not want to go back to prison, which we talked about. I do. I don't want to go back to prison. But I also think I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to hurt anybody. But was it maturity? Did something happen in prison that truly rehabilitated you? And why didn't go the extra step and make it so you realize that it's wrong to steal from institutions like banks and insurance companies too? Well, one, I think that, and I'd mentioned this, Pete, and Pete says he didn't steal this from Einstein,

but I believe this is an Einstein quote, where it's, it's you, but Pete altered it for prison, which is you cannot, you cannot go to prison and continue to behave in the manner that got you to prison and then leave prison and not come back. You have to expect to come back unless you alter your behavior. And so I remember thinking, If I, when I got out of prison, like even if I have to live in someone's spare room and I never have any money, like, it's just better to try and just be a decent person and just do the right thing and, you know, work hard and maybe something will happen.

And if I live in someone's spare room, at least I get control of the clicker and I can control the TV myself instead of having to ask, you know, cook, can we watch walking dead on Sunday? You know what I'm saying? So I, so there's that. And I just, and also, I didn't want to go back to prison. but the more I thought about it on the way here last night and on the way here. I'm keeping the 10,000 from State Farm. They're not going to get hurt. That CEO is not laying awake at night thinking our fraud numbers are up.

I mean, it's going to cost no, but it's 10 grand. It's not your money. It is my money. I've got it in my bank account. Nobody knows. I know. I know. Well, I'm not going to work for the FBI.

I'm also, clearly. Listen, you've come a long way. Yeah. You can take the cat out of the alley, but you can't take the alley. but you can't take the alley out of the cat. I feel like I'm kind of animals and small children. I feel like I'm a decent person. I just there's just one thing.

Yeah. All right. Well, anyway, I had a fantastic night with you guys and your brides. So I want to just thank you so much for picking up the tab for dinner. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Not only did I pay for my hotel room last night and the trip here, I covered dinner too. Before we went, Jess said, are you paying for dinner?

And I went, no. She said, why not? He always says this thing about you not paying. And I said, no, because he said, I'm going to pay. I said, I'm asking everybody to go to dinner and I'm paying. Why would I do that? I'm busting your chops for the good of the show because I know people enjoy the fact that you stiff me every time. Okay.

Congratulations, by the way, on the incredible increase in followers. So we've got a lot of new people. So I'd like to explain the game show to them if that's okay. Awesome. I got 12 true crime stories because that's what I do. do. I was a former FBI agent. I am a former FBI agent. I was an FBI agent for 26 years. Now I'm a private investigator here in Florida. I investigate crimes then and now. And then I just, you know, as an FBI agent. Now I try to shepherd those cases to the FBI on behalf of my clients. So I, and I have

this Instagram following on TikTok where, and YouTube now, thanks to you, where I do these two, three minute crime stories every single day. And so I take those stories and I harvest kind of the greatest hits to them, and I bring them here to kind of tell an expanded version of these crime stories. Some are cases I work, most of our cases other people worked. And I explained the crime, usually how it was discovered and how the bad guy was caught, the investigation, the prosecution. And then when it comes time to the sentencing, you, Matt Cox, an expert in crime and sentencing and incarcerations because of your checkered past, makes a guess as to how long

that person serves in prison. And if you are within a 25% variance of the actual sentence, then you get a point. And your goal over the course of the next couple hours with me is to see if you can get more than 50% correct. Right? And if I get more of 50%, I win. Yeah. Yeah, you win. But it's not that I lose, right?

It's not, no, no, no, I'm not competing with you, okay? I'm the game show host, and you are the contestant on this thing. Okay. Do you really think that shouldn't I be doing the crimes and you? picking the sentences. Is it sort of a code switch for the show? And it's proven to be successful. Because I know you work very hard interviewing these miscreants every episode.

And so this is an opportunity for you to kind of sit back and flex your muscles a little bit intellectually and show everybody how much you know about the criminal justice system because it's been such an integral part of your life. That's the idea. So you're kind of turning over the hosting duties to me for the next couple hours. But everyone knows that you're the star of the show. We all know that. Okay. You're the name of the marquee. You're the guy who got recognized at the restaurant last night by his dumb random guy.

And so, um, it was good. So let's do the first story, okay? All right. And this is a case I worked, but I wasn't the case agent. And it's always important for me to say that because, um, I do not want my former colleagues at the FBI. I think I'm taking credit for their work. The case agent was way smarter and better looking than me. But I was on the team investigating this thing and the survey ones.

And we talked last episode, a little bit about kidney health. We don't need to re-reinted that. But that's sort of a key element of this. There's a fellow in Jacksonville named Bernardo Boletete, and he was suffering from kidney failure. And kind of a bad deal for him. And he needed to have a couple more tests. And it looks like he might have had to go on kidney dialysis, which we've discussed in the past. There's a real drag, right?

I mean, you're hooked up to a machine for hours a day, kind of filtering the system, doing the work of kidneys that are failing to keep your blood clean and everything working out. but he really did not want to go on dialysis. His whole thing was, I would rather die than go on dialysis. He just was really against that idea. And so, but he started talking to people and telling people that if he has to go on dialysis, he's going to go on a mass killing spree and go to the local mosque in Jacksonville and take out as many Muslims as possible.

Crazy, huh? Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not. or how that I don't see how that's a leap like what's going well I mean he clearly had a bias against muslims and he felt that the world would be a better place without them he did not it was almost like a suicide by cop kind of no I'm just saying that the if I'm going to have to go on I'm gonna I'm gonna start killing people like what how does well you know I mean like I'm not saying it's a logical decision I'm saying that he he thought that you know if he's going to go out he's going to take as many Muslims with him as possible which um and of course word of that comes

back to both the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and the FBI, because he was kind of telling this to anybody who was willing to listen. And he was sort of a gun guy. He was a guy who had weapons and lived a couple miles from the big mosque in Jacksonville. And so it got assigned to two really good agents, one very senior agent, one very young agent, and they needed volunteers to go and be on the surveillance team to put this guy under 24-7 surveillance to make sure he wasn't going to go near the mosque and do something. And so I was on that surveillance team.

I missed a Thanksgiving dinner one year because I took Thanksgiving shift on it. And we're following this guy around. And eventually, and the FBI gets criticized for this, but I don't know what else we could really do. The FBI introduced an undercover, I believe it was an undercover police officer who kind of befriended him and began making calls in recordings with Bernardo Bolotete. day. And he continued to talk about his plans to kill Muslims. And so at one point, it was always very, I love the FBI, but our marching orders weren't entirely clear. Like, what were we as the surveillance agents truly supposed to do if at like noon one day he decided to drive to the campus of the mosque? Right. What's our deadly force policy under that situation? Do we hop out of

the car and start shooting him. Do we pull him over and try and then come out of the clock and come out of the shadows and say you know you're under arrest? And then what are we really arresting him for at that point? I mean, it's not illegal to have a gun, lots of guns in Florida. It's almost like they give it to you when you move in. Right. And so the decision was made. And so the decision was made a way, you know, and I had nothing to do with this decision to try to move this thing forward. And Bernardo asked to get a silencer because he, um, a illegal silencer. Is this the front to the police officer? Yeah, to the undercover police officer who was a guy who claimed to have access to that type of thing.

And so he asked for a, I guess, people, gun people call them suppressors. A suppressor that in some, I don't really, gun laws are not my thing in kind of gun mechanics. But I guess there are such things as legal suppressors. And then most of them are illegal. He wanted an illegal one. That illegal suppressor was then sold to him. And then we arrest, not we, the FBI, because I wasn't on the arrest. arrested him in kind of a by-bust situation just to take him off the streets.

Right. It was becoming financially and resource, resource overwhelming to follow this guy 24-7. Yeah. That is a lot of work. Every now and then I get called by people who are experiencing crazy talk in their mind believing they're being surveilled 24-7. I say, listen, you are not important enough to be surveilled 24-7. There's not enough money in this world to staff the amount of people you would need for a 24-7 surveillance.

And so he was arrested. When I was locked up, I thought a lot about home-cooked meals. Now that I'm free, I try to enjoy them as much as I can. That's why I like, Hello Fresh. It makes cooking easy, even if you're busy. The meals are simple, they taste great, and they bring everyone to the table. They've got over 100 recipes every week from all over the world. Big portions, too, so nobody leaves hungry.

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value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Sold him the suppressor for 100 bucks. And then he gets arrested. The idea, take him off the street somehow.

So he gets charged with basically buying a illegal silencer and takes it to trial and loses. But again, the context here is much bigger than simply a firearms charge. But given that, what sentence are you going to give Bernardo Boletete, Judge Matt Cox? I'm trying to think if that judge would take it into consideration that he's dying. Well, again, people can live a long time on dialysis. Yeah, it's not a great deal, but there's dialysis in prison. Yeah, there is. As a matter of fact, I wonder if they wouldn't even force him to take dialysis.

So the jury and the judge get to understand the full contact. as to why he wanted this suppressor. Yeah. But the crime is just, and this is the guy with a criminal history. What was he charged with? What's the actual charge? Yeah, just basically attempting to buy a illegal silencer. Well, it's not a hate crime.

He didn't actually really do anything. Yeah, I didn't do anything. Yeah, because I think it doubles. I think you get like double the sentence if it's a hate crime or something along those lines. You get an extra enhancement. Right. That may have been a consideration to the judge, but I don't know. that he was never charged with a hate crime.

And he was it, was he a convicted felon? No. I just dropped it from 120 to 60, 60 months? 60 months? Yeah. How long is that? Five years. Okay.

You're going to go with that? Yeah, I am. Again, this was a, he intended to do something really bad. You understand that. He didn't do it, though. Right. But for the heroism of the FBI, he didn't do it. And he went to trial in law.

I just look at your wife's face and tell it's a bad decision. 60 months is a bad call. Andy went to trial, so you might want to think. And again, I'm not trying to push you off your first. I'm not letting you move off of my gut. I'm going to say it might be one, I was going to say 120. Let's say six. I'm going to say 60 months.

60 months. 60 months. Okay. For the simple act of just buying a little device that would make your gun shoot quieter. Boy, you never win an argument, do you? That's what my wife says to me. She's like, it's impossible to argue because I've, thought through that. I just want you to be, you can twist. No, I want you to be comfortable with your

guest. A minute ago, you were twisting me the other way. I'm not getting the impression that you're comfortable at all with this. I feel good about my. Listen, even, I don't care if he got, I don't care if he got 15 or 20 years. He should have only gotten five. Oh, so that's what we're doing now. This is an act of activism by you. But I mean, it's a silencer. I think, you know, if he was a, if he was a convicted fellow, but if he has every, he doesn't have every right to buy the silencer. But I want to say it's like, I want to, what is the mandatory minimum is it like five or ten years, something like that? It's like five or ten years if you buy a silencer.

Okay. Something like that. So I want to say five. Well, no, no, you're getting there. So we have the floor. Yeah. Or one of two floors in your mind. And then, but you, so let's say, let's say it's a five year crime.

You don't think the judge takes into account what he's going to be doing with that? Look. I know that 60 months is off. I can just, I can just tell. We don't need to be going to the studio. audience for help. This is one player per hand in this poker game. I'm going to split the difference. I'm going to split the difference. I'm going to

go with you. If you, if I split the difference, if I split the difference. I don't know if you're splitting the difference down or splitting the difference up. I've said 120 and I've said 60. Not exactly sure what's what's between 120 and 60? Yeah, what's like 90 months, you know. I'll go with 90 months. 90 months. 90 months.

How many years is that, Colby? It should be seven and a half. Roughly. Yeah, seven and a half, exactly. Okay. So 90 months is now what we're going with? You say, like, 58 months. What is?

We're in 90 months now? I'm at 90 months. All right. We don't need to torture you for this long. I just want to make sure I understand that you're comfortable with this because I haven't sensed comfort from you yet. I know. Okay, 90 months. 90 months?

Okay. Correct answer? 60 months. Mother. Listen. I receive within 25% of the years. Let's see. 60 times 1.2. No, no, no, it's 90. Oh, no, you're right. 60 times 1.25. Yeah. No. No. Because that would have been a 30. 75. See, had you just believed in yourself when you said 60, I wouldn't have needed a follow up with you.

You were twitching and it was just so, this is so wrong. Starting off the right foot. Let me explain something. Yeah, Lay and I'll be. You know, I mean, I feel like one of those guys that people are like, why did you admit to committing the crime when you didn't commit the crime? So you don't understand. They twisted it. Of course, listen, I and these are guys that, I'm impressed by some guy who goes six hours and then admits to a crime he didn't do. You made it six hours?

He made it six hours. All right. All right. Well, you did, your logic was pretty good. And I keep making the mistake of thinking, we're friends. We are misleading. I'm not trying to mislead you. If you come into a guest with pure confidence and you're like, dude, I got this.

I would never ever tweak you. That's a lie. All right. You ready for story number two? Yes. And then I, yeah. Do you need a break? I do need to go back from.

I drink the coffee. I'm old. Take a leak. Take a leak. Take a leak. Take a leak. We're good. Let's do a fraud story.

Let's talk a little bit about the mechanics of a pump and, and dump scheme. Do you know what about those? Yes, I do. What do you tell me a little bit about what your understanding is and we'll explain it to the audience. It's, it's, I knew a guy that ran a pump and dump. I mean, I've known several, but this one guy who was, I think he was related to John, was it God, John Gotti. He was in the Gotti family. He actually changed his name to his mother's maiden name.

And he used to tell me that the pump and dumps had been perfectly legal, perfectly legal. I don't think so. He used to say he was innocent. Shouldn't even be here. Anyway, it's basically, I mean, traditionally it's when you kind of incorporate a company and then you bring it public and then you pump up the financials and pump up the stock artificially so that people think that the stock is trading at $120 when really the company is almost a fabrication in some instances. Sometimes maybe there's a company, but it's nowhere. it's not worth anything near what they're saying. You know, you fudge the financials, and then you, the stock should be trading at nothing

or maybe a dollar or something, and they get it up to like 120. Then the people that are running the pump and dump, they sell off all their stock before any of the investors can sell off theirs. They get paid a ton of money, and then the stock crashes. The company goes under. People lose everything. Exactly. You said it perfectly.

There's two variations. The one that we're going to talk about is very similar to what you just described. The other one is the Wolf of Wall Street one where you don't own the company, but you identify a worthless company. And then you set up a boiler room full of people to cold call senior citizens, sell them this stock because you have a hot tip it's going to go places. You, the person running the boiler room buys a bunch of shares of this penny stock, pumps up the price, get the price pumped up by selling a bunch to senior citizens at inflated prices, which brings the shares up and then you dump all your shares and get out. That's what the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort's story was about. And in that case, there actually is a company. It's not a fabricated company.

It's a real company. It's just not really worth nearly what it's happening. Because usually this doesn't happen with the New York Stock Exchange of the NASDAQ. There's a third kind of OTC, over-the-counter stocks. They call them green sheets back in the days. Those stocks are very popular targets for pump and dumps. There's a crypto version up that people are talking about a lot now called rugpoles. Yeah.

Where like the Hawk toa girl, you know, she had somebody, I'm sure she was just the face of it, issue a bunch of hawk-toa crypto coins that people bought as part of the being the issuer. She gets a certain number of them. As soon as the price goes up on those, she dumps all her shares, pulling the rug out from everybody else. And then the shares crash. She got all the money from the run-up. It's called a rug pull. It's the crypto version of a pump and dump.

Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about a scientific miracle here involving a pump-and-dump scheme. If you could think of a scientific breakthrough miracle in the medical field, what do you think would be a good one? What would be on your wish list? I think that's a great one. In my case, I'd probably be height. I'd be like, I'll forego cancer. I'll kill you could take to be six foot four.

I get three more inches. Well, this one is about a scientific miracle of a different kind. There was a Vancouver, Washington company called Citodine. An investor sat up and took notice when the CEO, Nadir Poorhasam, announced that his company had developed a drug, a pill that you could take, that would eradicate the HIV virus and the COVID virus. Imagine that, Matt Cox. You would two birds with one stone. You would never have to wear a condom again.

You just take the pill and HIV is gone as well as COVID, a virus killer. And so everyone gets really excited about this. Nadir said that this miracle drug was fast-tracked for FDA approval and would be hitting the market imminently. Right around the corner, guys. He's going to save millions of lives worldwide. That's what you said. You know, Africa still has an AIDS crisis. News of this miracle causes the stock of cytodyne to soar to the stratosphere.

It's going up through the roof. And then the CEO Nader, what does he do? He begins dumping his personal shares, profiting $4.4 million in this run-up of the stock price, prompted by his announcement of the scientific miracle. Okay? Well, of course, you see what's coming because this is what we do here. there was no miracle drug at all. You still need to wear a rubber.

And CEO Nader was simply just absolutely full of shit about this drug. It didn't exist. The FBI launches an investigation and charges him with securities fraud and insider trading. It was both insider trading and securities fraud, essentially a pump and dump against Nader. He also takes the case to trial. I know. I know. Why don't they have lawyers telling them that it's a good deal running the guidelines with and without

trial and the jury comes back guilty on all counts. The government's, this is important to keep in mind when you're thinking of the sentencing. The government seizes $4.4 million in assets from him. Right. Okay. So there's no, no, there's no restitution. There's no fraud law. No, but no loss. Right. Well, there's a fraud loss for sentencing guidelines, but no restitution because they went and took his stuff. So he's not going to be able to enjoy any of his ill-gotten gains in the future. But he does have a sentence. And I'm going to tell you it was a prison sentence. Matt Cox. Mm-hmm.

How long is Nader's prison sentence for this pump-and-dump scheme with his company? What was the, what was, wasn't there like a one-year thing or what was, didn't we have another rule for under a year or something like that? If you're within a year, you will get the point, yeah. Yeah. If it's under, if the sentence is under a year? Yeah. Yeah.

Say, say if he, yeah, if Matt gets us six months and it's a year and a half. He's irritated because he was like, what do you do? talking about it's still a percentage there's still a percentage we've yeah I lost that I lost that fight I lost that fight I lost that fight and as I pointed out to be thousands of Matt Cox fans who reach out to me telling you tell me that that's bullshit I said listen

it's Matt show it's Matt show and there's no real stakes here so what do I care let me think let's think there's no dollar loss I don't say anything that makes for a good podcast I can already tell.

And they got the money back. He's a felon. We don't know if he was a felon. No, no. He's a CEO. This guy's not a criminal. We don't know if how many victims. Um, no.

But I think the, I mean, this is a publicly traded company. I don't know what stock exchange it was, but victims are funny like that, right? Because, um, when it comes to a pump and dump scheme or something like that, because the market is really, the victim, right? The bunch of people went out and bought the stock at inflated prices, you know, and on the basis of this thing. But it's hard, like, I don't know that you, I mean, thousands, hundreds, thousands, dozens. I mean, I don't know how many people. It's not like he's out there pushing the stock, like in a Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street situation. This is probably traded in the NASDAQ and people just buy and sell stocks all the time. This one has a big announcement,

and a lot of people bought stock based on that announcement. But in a pump enough you bought, if you put 10,000, $1,000 into it, and then the stock suddenly is worth, you know, 40 bucks. But what you're saying is that they were made whole. A pump and dump, you cannot look at victim losses. You can only look at the gain to the bad guy who's doing it. Really? Yes. Especially if it's a public-a-traded company, man.

How on earth are you going to figure out which little lady bought this stock at $30, who wouldn't have bought it at $30, but she would have bought it at $25? How many people are relying on this public announcement? It's just, it's a tough situation when you're dealing with. insider trading to identify human victims. So if I say one year and it's two months, I win. Yes. Technically, when you need to have to say 364 days?

Yeah, I was just going to, I think I was like 11 months. But if it's, and if it's 14 months, then I win. Within a year. Within a year. If it's, if the sentence is below a year, what if it's above it? If it's just, if you're within a year, I'm going to give it to you. I mean, because I don't. I don't remember this. You and Colby are business partners. It makes sense that it.

I feel like this guy got like a month. He got like 90 days. Okay, well, talk to me about the seriousness of the crime. You don't take this crime seriously? I do, but I really only take it seriously because of what I'm thinking of the victims. But you're saying they don't take that into consideration. Like that bothers me. Like to me, if some old lady put $30,000. The market is the victim. It's a collective victim. So for this, the market is the collective victim. But the insurance company, when I want to keep the, the 10 grand, then there's, that's an institutional victim, which is owned by somebody. But people were buying the stock. Say six months. Let's see how that goes for you. I've got to say 11 months. You want to say 11 months?

11 months. 11 months. Final answer? Yes. All right, good. The correct answer? 30 months in prison. Oh.

You need to trust your heart not be so tactical. Yeah. Follow your heart. Yeah, hope. That's a, that's a strategy. Were you in prison kind of when Facebook came out, like, to the public and became a big thing in 2008, 2009? Or was that before you went in? Actually, it had been out.

I think Facebook had been out for like a year. Like, it came out. I want to say because I was locked up in 2006. And I specifically remember being at the office and the girl I was dating was saying, she was going to close her MySpace and start moving everything to Facebook. And she said, do you want a Facebook? And I was like, I'm on the Secret Services. I'm number one of the Secret Service's Most Wanted List.

FBI's looking for me. I don't feel like throwing my picture out there is a good idea. I'm like, I'm going to go with no. And she's like, would you mind if I post you and I? No, I feel like that's a bad idea. So no, I'm going to go with no. So it had been out. I want to say it'd been out about a year.

I don't know when Facebook actually started. Wouldn't Facebook actually start? Well, see, Facebook, I mean, I know if you saw the movie, right? Yes, social network. So Facebook was like a college thing. You had to have like a dot edu email address to be a part of it. And we probably, I think it just started at Harvard, according to the movie, which I think is pretty accurate. Then it became, you had to be a college kid.

And then they started opening it up to everyone in the nation. And it kind of took off really fast. Right. Launched in 2004 and a public in 2006. Okay. So probably early, because I was arrested at the end of 2006. When you say public, open to the public, used or not publicly traded.

Expanding to other universities and eventually open to the public in 2006. Yeah. Yeah. And so I know I got on Facebook probably with the rest of America in 2008, 2009. That's when like everybody was hopping on it. And there were so many different interesting things that were happening to the culture. And you were busy running from the law at the time. But it was kind of funny just watching it occur because people were reconnecting with friends from high school.

People were reconnecting with their high school girlfriend that they hadn't talked to in 40 years. divorcing their wives. It was like, it was, it rocked the world. I mean, people were having these get-togethers and like, you know, it's, it was, it was just amazing how that thing went from zero to everybody overnight. And affinity groups began to form. You know, if you were into like Led Zeppelin, you could go do that. Or if you were into some weird like devil stop, you could go do that or, you know, any, any kind of subgroup of people, you could find a Facebook community to latch on too. And as we've talked about before, those affinity groups are very, very powerful influencers on people and their attitudes. And when it comes to fraud, an affinity fraud is a very

big deal because that's when the person, when the Pop Warner football mom decides to rip off the other Pop Warner football moms. And you trust them because they're part of your same affinity group. And, you know, or the Baptists or the Mormons or any kind of sub- rodeo people. rodeo people. We've talked about that before. And it's interesting. I like thinking, I've been reading a book called Sapiens, sort of about the

history of our species. And, you know, going back 40 million years. And the DNA that's encoded within us is this affinity thing that we've talked about extensively on the show, it's not just ignorance. It's baked into our DNA. To survive, we are tribal people.

And there has to be trust among the tribe. And so, When there was a guy named Jacob Dalton in Sarasota Springs, Utah, and he had a lot of friends on Facebook. And those friends also had friends. And they were like a community. I don't know if they were Mormon or not. I couldn't find this in any of the court documents. They're not going to say that.

But it has that kind of feel to it, that these people had, they were more just Facebook friends. They were a faith community as well, probably. So he puts it out there on Facebook that he was going to offer investments in his company, rogue liquidity. LLC. It was a firm that was going to pool investor money, give him the money, and then he's going to help out companies and individuals who are having liquidity problems by giving them high interest short-term loans. And you as an investor could profit from those loans. He was offering investors and get a load of this. Guaranteed Matt Cox. Risk-free Matt Cox. Got to be legit. Investment returns of 60% on their money, right? You give me $1,000. I'm going to

give you $1,600 back. But it's guaranteed. No risk. Right? Sounds a good deal. Yeah. I wonder why the bank didn't lend you the money. Yeah.

If it was guaranteed. Well, I know what you're thinking. 60% sounds kind of outlandish. Who would believe that, but that's the thing with an affinity fraud. Yeah. But it's guaranteed. They trust this guy because he's part of their group. He's part of their tribe.

And like I said, that's a thing. And it's a powerful thing. And we can discount it. We can laugh at how dumb these people are. But they have DNA working for them. making them trust this guy. And so 45 people, 45 of his Facebook friends, give him $1.5 million collectively. Okay.

This happened over a 14-month period. And as you may have guessed by now, this being a true crime show, there was no liquidity pool and investor funds were just used to fund Jacob's lifestyle. Right. Okay. It wasn't really clear how he spent the money. I wish I had that information for you. But I do know that when the FBI finally swooped in, as they always do, there were no assets remaining. There was nothing left to be seized from him.

I mean, he pissed away. How long? How long did this take place? 14 months. Of 14 months? Yeah, 1.5 million. I believe in you. Over 100,000 a month.

I believe you could spend $1.5 million in 14 months if you put your mind to it. I'd probably still end up with something left. I'd have a couple of cars left over. Smart criminals, lease cars, right? Right. So the Provo Office of the FBI swoops in to investigate. They launch a fraud investigation. Jacob gives a full confession.

I'm sorry. I did it. Guilty plea. Goes in and pleads guilty. He was just sentenced. Obviously, he's being sentenced to pay $1.5 million in restitution to his 45 Facebook friends. How much time is a guy like that going to serve in prison? No criminal history.

It's not even, if 45 victims, I've been over 50, victims. That would be it. That's right. He's skated underneath that number. You're thinking. Yeah. Sophisticated means. Okay. I don't think that, I don't think that much. I mean, I'm going to maybe say 30 months. 30 months? Yeah. For that many victims? 45. That's not over 50. And it's over 10. Like, you know, it goes from like one to 10, then from 10 to 50 and for 50 to like, do you think he would qualify for the use of mass marketing, which is an enhancement? Yeah. But he also. he pled guilty. He did. It sounds like right away he pled guilty. It's 1.5 million.

Yeah. Not 1.5,000. 30 months. Maybe 36 at the most 36. I'm not trying to sway you either way. I just want you to understand all the facts before you make your finalized. I feel like the Mormons are very, feel like the very forgiving people. I don't know that the judge was Mormon.

You don't know that. We don't know that anybody was Mormon, really. The odds are that if you throw around. pocket 45 people in Saratoga Springs, Utah. You're going to hit a Mormon. But, um, um, 30, 30, 30, it's only one here. The problem is like, I know guys that have stolen tons of money and gotten sweetheart deals, you know, like, like. And so I'm, that's why this kid pled guilty.

You played guilty. Probably a very good hygiene, combed hair. He probably looked very nice. Yeah, 30 months. I think maybe 30 months. All right. You go with 30 months? I guess so, yeah.

Yes. I don't want to hear, I guess, though. 30 months, 30 months, okay, correct answer, 24 months. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, so that's, yeah, you hit it. If you said 31 months, I don't think he would have gotten it, right? Because 25% of 24 months is. Well, what would have been within a year?

Or are we doing within a year, however? No, no matter what, is it? Really? I think so. Oh, Jesus. My way, bother. Look at it. You know what he's thinking?

like I'm going to have to manipulate him more. I'm going to pull him aside. I'm going to really work my magic to get Cox off of the actual mark. I hit that first one on the head. Yeah. You should be a shame. I know. I feel terrible.

You feel bad? Do you sleep? Had you not told me you were going to steal from the insurance company when they were shown a little more mercy? I'm a soft spot in my heart for insurance companies. You like Asian food? I do like Asian. What's your favorite kind of Asian food of all the different types of? flavors of Asians.

You got your Chinese, you got your Thai, you got your Vietnamese, you got your Japanese, you got your Korean, you got your Filipino. Yeah, Chinese. I used to love butterflyed shrimp. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's when they take the shrimp, they split it in half and then they dip it in egg and they fry it. It's delicious.

You like a Chinese more than you like a Thai food-wise? So that is? Yes. Okay. I do like Japanese. I do like a sushi, too. You like the Japanese steakhouse where they do, they get a little show there, and they're like flinging shrimp into your mouth

and everyone sitting around laughing at the he builds a little volcano out of the the um the the right in your mouth you ever do that like yeah the the tepaniaki ones the ones they know they they they build a little volcano out of the um the onions and then sometimes they're chopping up the shrimp and they say open your mouth sir and he flings the shrimp into your mouth with like a is that real yeah we

I did that this weekend and the uh yeah the chef was like he's gone to my wife she's like does she like it big or small And I'm like small. Yeah, clearly. And then he gave me a fist bomb. That's funny. Yeah, those things are fun. Yeah, I don't feel.

It's almost like dinner and a show. And they sit you with strangers, too. It's like a cruise ship. I just feel like I'm a little too heterosexual to have another man throwing shrimp in one half. I can't imagine that like Benny Hott's insurance company is really excited about that. It seems like a lot could go wrong flinging a flaming piece of shrimp into some guy's throat. Let's do a national security story. It's about China.

So you guessed by right there. Yeah, my segue is a little awkward, but we'll make it work. His real name was Jin Chow Wei, but he was Patrick to his friends. Patrick, Pat. He was a U.S. Navy sailor, worked on the USS Essex based in San Diego. Okay. He had a security clearance, very high security clearance, allowing, giving him access to sensitive national defense information about that ship's weapon system and mechanical system.

This guy was like an engineer type. during his naval service, he began communicating with an intelligence officer. He called Big Brother Andy from China. He's communicating with the guy from China from the People's Republic of China, who begins asking him for information about the Essex and other Navy ships. And at the request of this Chinese intelligence officer, and Patrick is not being deceived, he knows goddamn well this is an intelligence officer. He's providing photos, videos, technical manuals concerning the ship's weapons.

systems, it's propulsion systems, and it's desalination systems. You know what a desalination system is? It's for water, right? Yeah, you take in the salt water. It takes the salt out and allows the people in the boat to drink that water. You know, this is a big deal, right? Okay, this is, a lot, and a lot of these things truly are technical secrets. His handler wanted him to walk the pier and film other ships that are docked there on a daily

basis. And I should make you guess how much he was paid for this. He charged $500 a day for the days that he's providing information and walking and filming other ships and stuff like that. Chinese are so cheap. They are. They are. The two agreed to hide their communications by deleting records of their conversations and using only encrypted apps to text each other. He was also paid $12,000.

I'm sorry, he was paid $12,000 over the course of this conspiracy. And he was told not to talk about this to. anybody. Of course, the FBI keeps pretty good tabs on suspected Chinese intelligence officers operating in the U.S. and around the world. And the FBI stumbles upon the fact that Patrick is spying for the Chinese. They move in on him and they arrest Patrick. Okay, for he's arrested for transmitting sensitive military information to China. Okay, I delved into the court records because I was kind of fascinated by this case and this young man. I think he was in his 20s. He wasn't like an old guy. He was interviewed by the agents. And when asked Patrick how he would describe what he had

been doing with the intelligence officer, his response to the FBI agent was espionage. During his first, after his, after when he was arrested, he's Mirandized. He's interviewed. He tells the FBI, oh, I am screwed. Those were his words. And the FBI agent says, what makes you say that? and Patrick says that I'm sharing on the that I'm sharing the unclassified document I mean document with um hum I'm not supposed to do that that's what he says so uh Patrick basically offers functionally a convention a confession to the FBI agents nevertheless he takes it to trial what's wrong with these people and as we've talked about before when we do national security cases the government the U.S. Department of Justice does not want these cases to go to trial because because then the secrets have to be presented to the jury, and they're kind of not secrets at that point. But I guess at some point they figured the horses left the barn. Patrick ain't taken whatever deal they were offering him.

And he's found guilty. Let me read the crimes that he's found guilty of six different crimes. Conspiracy to commit espionage. Espionage. Unlawful export and conspiracy to export technical data related to defense articles in violation of arms export control act, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, kind of like the laundry list. of crimes that would be related to this thing.

How much time are you going to give Patrick? U.S. Navy Man. One of our sailors. I want to say 120 months. 120 months. That would be 10 years, right? Talk to me about that. Because I want to keep in mind that we've had these cases before,

and I'm giving you a little hint here, where people have gotten tremendous deals, and you and I are like, that seems so low. We talk about the fact that it's because the government offers great deals for going, to not going to trial. Whatever deal was offered.

He didn't, yeah, he, he, he went to trial. He took this one to the mat. And, and you think he gets 10 years for this. Yeah, I think if he had pled guilty, they'd probably given him two or three years, you know, but. Do you think 10 years is the hammer that was dropped? Yeah, I think he gave him the information. And I think he's just, for stupidity, he should have gotten five years. Like, what do you, like, look, what do you think is going to be done with this information, Patrick?

Do you see him say, like, yeah. Do you think they're just. collecting it, sticking in a file, or do you think maybe they're designing weapons or they know where our boats are? We're trying to steal our technology and make their boats as awesome as ours. Almost everything that they have is stolen. Yeah. Like your fellow sailors and countrymen, you know, their lives are at risk.

You put people's lives at risk. Like, these are boats that could go under. These are, come on, man. Like, that's not, it's not cool. And you knew it wasn't. It's not like you're saying, no, no, this was my cousin. Oh, they were threatening my family member. Oh, they, no, I'm just taking five.

And 500 bucks. That's another one. That's another. I'll give you another two years for stupidity. $500 a day? Like, come on, man. No, I think 10 years. He'll probably get three, but I think 10 years.

I think that's reasonable. Okay. You're making a good case. See, I like your spirit. I like your attitude. I like the commitment you have to this 10-year guest, which is why I'm not going to try and push you off of it. The correct answer is 200 months in prison.

16.66 years. Wow. Right. Patrick Way. What an idiot. They were probably trying to, maybe they were trying to give them like five years. You know, it's so funny. Some of these guys, they think they're like, well, I can't go to jail.

Like, bro, it's two years. It's three years. It's nothing. Trust me, you had a harder time in the Navy that you're going to have at the low security prison in Coleman. Right. Like, what do you think? Oh, I shouldn't. People are delusional.

Then they get 16 years or, and then they're like, oh, you should have taken the three. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. There's a dumb dumb, especially after confessing. Like, where are you going to go from? Yeah. Well, I mean, he didn't even need to confess.

Yeah, he didn't. No, the only had the goods on him. Right. But you knew. He knew the moment they sat down. He knew he was guilty. So it's not like, no, no, you don't understand it. Like, it's not quite cut and dry.

No, it's pretty cut and dry. You admitted it. You knew what you were doing, bro. Yeah. Got him. All right. You like babies, Matt Cox? They're all right.

I mean, you're kind of a huge fan. You're sort of a step grandfather now, right? I am. They made me hold him. Yeah, he's so small. Yeah. He's so small. Yeah. Not into it?

I'm going to break him He's so tiny They don't do anything All right No, that's a fair answer When he's Your own Your own child children?

How many you got? One son When he was a baby Were you into it? Yeah, you know, I was working Yeah They're tiny There's not much I can do

No, I don't really need me Again, when he's two or three years old You know I'm sure the audience is recoiling And disgust by your answer But I'm actually kind of with you on this That you know, I have two kids loved them when they were babies, enjoyed holding them and all that, kind of bored with them.

I really enjoyed every year subsequently where they began to develop personalities and interests. And now that my kids are adults, it's nice to have two fantastic adults that I have some input into who they are today. And we have shared interest and lots to talk about and jokes from, you know, their 20 years plus of life. And so I'm way more into that than I am into babies. But I know a lot of women are like just baby crazy. Oh, yeah. Listen, Jess is over at her daughter's house every single day playing, you know, taking care of the baby, holding the baby. They love it.

They all of them wants to hold the baby. I don't want to hold the baby. Okay, so you're lukewarm on babies. African-American babies in Milwaukee were dying at an alarming rate of 15 per 1,000 alive births. Real problem. Like, this is a health problem. Yeah, why? That's three times the death rate of white babies.

And this is not a fraud case. Public health officials in Wisconsin decided that the answer to this is going to be better prenatal care for pregnant black mothers. Okay. Make sense? Incentivized by Wisconsin Medicaid. They're going to fund a program to get the vitamins and the supplements needed to these pregnant mothers in hopes that their babies will fare better when they're alive because this was a real live, no-joke problem. And so there's a woman named Precious Cruz. She forms a company called Caring through Love.

Is that nice? Ostensibly to provide prenatal care to vulnerable pregnant women in Milwaukee. But her actual plan, Matt Cox, was to get rich through fraud. Okay. Okay. So Precious lures in pregnant women with the promise of free baby items like car seats, pack and plays, diapers, and baby wipes. And she signs up and enrolls these women in Wisconsin's prenatal care Medicaid program.

And after signing them up, Precious gave the mothers their prizes and then sent them on their way with no actual medical care. Here's your baby seat. Here's your diapers. You sign on this dotted line. And then Precious begins to bill the hell out of Medicaid for the health services she never provided these mothers. She receives $700,000 from the system for services that were never provided to these mothers. Okay. Now you're seeing the fraud.

Yeah. Okay. What did she do with the money? She went on a shopping spree, basically. Luxury travel, designer clothing. She bought her own toddler an $18,000 custom diamond necklace and bracelet using the money. Her kid had some bling, Matt Cox. Precious is little precious.

just his little baby. She posted on Facebook, talking about Facebook earlier, after one of the shopping sprees, funded by your tax dollars. And she said, for Valentine's Day, he bought me the entire Louis Vuitton store. So it's only right that I get to buy Gucci out. And so she's going to these stores and just buying them out. And then you ever heard of a hotel called the Sybaris? It's a sex hotel.

Okay. Like where you go into like on a romantic weekend and have sex. I would maybe get some chlorine in the tub there in the room. And then she said she was going to the Sybarist with $40,000 cash and a first-class trip to Puerto Rico for the weekend. So she's posting her ostentatious lifestyle on Facebook for the world to see. So precious to $700,000 scam comes to the attention to my former colleagues at the FBI, and they launched an investigation. And they brought identity theft charges against her because she was actually submitting some of these things,

these documents. Right. And health care fraud charges against her. Precious, themed this week, went to trial. And her defense was essentially, we own a business and we can do whatever we want. It's our money. That was the heart of her defense. And you could decide if that's going to be a good defense or not when you, when you, but I can tell

you that the jury didn't see it that way. They found her guilty of 17 federal charges. Yeah. And so that's kind of where we're at. $700,000 Medicaid scam stealing money from the, basically from the taxpayers, but the Trojan horse that she used to steal the money were disadvantaged African American women in a place that has an alarming death rate for black babies. Do we know how many identity? I didn't she stole. It's a good question.

It's got to be over 100. Yeah, I think so. Again, I'm not sure how many counts there were in that. But I think it's not identity theft like what you did as much as she's basically applying for Medicaid in other people's names who had signed on the dotted line. She's using this thing as a way to harvest names, identity, as much like you did. She's initially getting them to come and fill out the paperwork. And here's your baby carriage or your car seat. And they leave, not realizing she's going to turn around and use that information to bill.

Yeah, they have no clue. Exactly. That's why it's identity theft. They think they got a book bag for back to school. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, I don't want to say 10 years because the dollar amount's so low, but I do think going to trial. I think they'd hammer her. I think they'd hammer her.

What does a hammer look like in this case, Matt Cox? A hammer would be, I think, 10 years. But let's say I'd go a little lower. Let's say it go 90 months. I only because, I only say that because, oh, you know what, there's also an enhancement for if the government is the victim. You imagine that they give you, like if you, Bank of America is one thing, but you steal from us. You're getting another two level enhancement or something. I don't know.

She's hit. It's like, it's almost like all the enhancements. She's, you know, vulnerable victims, check, you know, over 100 victims. Because I think it's the next, it's 100 to 250. say it's between 100 and two you know check you know sophisticated means check you know i mean she's just going through oh if you still well uh if you use a if you use a if you use a if you use a charitable institution and furtherance of your crime check now i will say that i do i don't believe that her company was registered as a non-for-profit i think it was a corporate a company that

which is just a you know which box you check when you file it with the state of wisconsin yeah my i I got the vulnerable victim. No, no, I didn't get vulnerable victim. I got, what was the enhancement I got was if you use a charitable institution? And that was simply because I had a, I told people, hey, taking surveys to determine where we, for the Salvation Army. Yeah. To determine, just because I said Salvation Army, I mean, she, you know, I didn't. So she opened a company saying, I'm giving away.

That's a shit. I'm sure they felt, I'm sure the judge would have been like, yeah, I feel like that's charitable. She was, you know, using charity to, you know, whatever. So I don't know. I'm still, I'm probably 90, probably 90 months. 90 months. I'm going to go 90 months. You said that a few times.

I feel like you're comfortable with 90 months. Are you? I don't feel comfortable that you're comfortable with my comfort. I am not. I want, I'm assessing you and your level of comfort with 90 months, and I feel like you're, you're good with that. And I'm good with, I was, 90 months, 90 months, yes. Okay, so you're comfortable with that. You'll go to bed tonight thinking, I guess, I made a good guess, well-reasoned at 90 months.

Get it over with, man. All right. Your show. All right, the correct answer? 111 months. Good job. Nice. Precious.

Almost. I was leaning towards 120. That would have been even better. But yeah, 90s good enough. Good enough. Yeah, see, it just wasn't enough money. Like, if she was a couple million, I think they would have definitely hammered her even. Mm-hmm.

Good. Where are we? Two for four. Two-for-four. 50%. So you're on the winning half. You're on truck. You're almost four-for-four if you hit the first one on the head.

It's double. Two points if you hit it on the head. Matt Cox? You're feeling he's making these up. I know. Exactly. This is the hunger game. You're wearing the same watch right now that you wore last night to dinner?

Yes. Yeah? You want to say what that watch is or no? What I? I don't care. It's the Trump watch. And we never make a million subscribers. No, I mean, listen, I don't know about the guys watch.

I mean, I'm not, I have no politics. I'm just curious. You know, it killed me, though? It was the marketing. It these, I mean, was it to come out recently while he was president? He's still president. No, white. We don't know when this show's airing.

But do you, but was this watch being sold during the course of his president? No, no, just recently. Okay, I didn't know. It's funny, and I thought it would be funny because I knew it was red and I knew guests would go, oh, wow, I like your watch. And I'd be like, oh, you like it? And just to see if they even notice that it's, I think it's funny. Yeah. But here's what they did was I was going through, like, Instagram and the watch comes up.

It's like, it's a targeted ad? $4.99. I don't know. But you have $4.99. And, you know, he's talking, whatever. And I looked at the watch. I was like, it's really nice watch. It's a good look at watch.

I have to give it that. And then, so, okay, so I watch the whole thing. I scroll. I'm not paying $500 for a watch. Yeah. You know, I'm one of these people who give me $20 million. I'm not spending half a million dollars on a Lamborghini. I'm just not doing it.

I get it. So, okay, then an hour later, maybe even later in the day, I'm scrolling. It comes up again. Stop for a second. No, I'm not doing it. Yeah. The next day I go to pull up Instagram for some reason, 50% off. Oh, it's a bargain.

249. I got to buy it. Literally going through and hitting the button to buy it. And I thought, you're a sucker. Like, what are you doing? Yeah. This is targeting you. They knew you stopped on the ad and you had interest in it and they just hit you.

You just got bought for a watch that probably was $30 from China, 60 because of the tariffs. You know, it wasn't made in China? No, I have no idea. It's me. In my opinion, I never hear him. I don't think he ever says, you know, made in America. I don't think so. It's a lovely watch.

We'll see how long it lasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not into politics at all. I don't have any super hard on for or against the president. It's just not, it's like the WNBA to me. That's the women's basketball league is something I just, I just don't care enough about it to, like, have any emotion. But it is interesting that this president, probably more than any others in our lives, evokes such passion on both sides of the equation.

Yes. From people who are absolutely deranged in love with him and people who are absolutely deranged against him. Yeah. And that's bizarre to me. It's, it's, it's, I've never seen a public figure evoke such strong passions on both sides. And as an outsider who doesn't care about women's basketball, I watch it and I'm like,

that's really interesting to me that you guys care so deeply about this guy and this thing. And so sociologically, it's just kind of interesting, and I'm sure they'll be studying this phenomenon for a long time thereafter. I wonder if it's just him, I mean, or if it's kind of the social media in general. Because since I got out of prison, like, I've noticed, like, the whole, like, cancel culture. Like, none of that was a thing when I went into prison. Like the cancer culture and the, the, the, just the, like you said, the hatred and the, you can say nothing right. I know.

Well, I get in my comments. I'm sure you do too. It's weird. Like it's, I wonder if, like, here's what I wonder is, like, after Trump's gone, will it be like that with the next guy? I mean, do you think, like, okay, let's say J.D. Vance becomes the next president. Do you think he's going to evoke that level of passion? I don't think so, but I also don't think he'll give. But let's face it, Trump gives you, gives them a lot of him, a lot of good material to go with.

So they're able to jump on it. But I think that sometimes they just twist anything that any, and it's not just, It's, like I said, it's both sides. Like, they can twist anything that Kamala Harris says. They can twist it. Like, they're altering things. I'm watching an interview and I'm, and then I hear the commentary and I'm thinking, okay, well, wait a minute.

That's not exactly what she said or he said or whatever. Everyone's going to score as many small points as they can on a day-to-day basis as opposed to kind of judging the overall presidency is either a success or a failure of the nation. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. It's someone who really has no dog in the fight. I will do occasional stories, and I've done them on your show about, like, an Antifa guy who does something really stupid or about a pro-Trump guy who does something really stupid. And whichever side I'm reporting on, the other side floods my comment and saying,

no, you're just a jackbooted thug who loves Trump or you're some left-wing Antifa guy. It's such a weak liberal, Tom. And neither, of course, is really true. I'm just reporting interesting federal cases that I think will draw engagement and all that. But it's funny how people not only want to be part of their, this one side of this, like, kind of online civil war we're having as a nation, but they want to make sure that everyone else has grabbed into it and dragged into it. Like, you know, the Israel-Palestine thing. Not something I really care about.

I don't really have a dog in that fight particularly. I'm not into Israel. I'm not really into Palestine. And it's also beyond my control. And I don't consider my apathy to be anything other than humility in the admission that some things in this world are going to be out of my control. And I'm going to focus on the things in my life that are within my control. Right. But people get so upset at the idea of you not picking aside on these existential conflicts.

Yeah. But there's a guy who did take a side on an existential conflict. And he's right here in town. Nice segue. A Tampa dentist. Because you know I have a soft spot in my heart for dental stories. Richard Cantwell. You know him?

Is he your dentist? Richard Cantwell. No, I can't pronounce my dentist's name. Nice guy. I'm sorry you can sound out Cantwell, so it's probably not him. He was a Trump fan. Probably had that same watch that you're wearing right now. Which is his right.

But he's one of these guys for him. like a cult or something. And it wasn't enough for him just to support the candidate of his choice. He took it to another level and sought out people on Facebook and Instagram, strangers might, you're not like friends of his, to send them threatening messages and emails for disagreeing with him about politics. A journalist wrote a negative article about Trump and Dr. Cantwell sent him an email that said, there's going to be some profanity here.

So if your kids are in the car and I'm just going to read it, Colby, and you can bleep out whatever you want. Is that cool? Yeah. Dr. Cantwell said, fuck you and yours. Higher extra security. You're going to need it. I plan on fucking you up just for the fun of it,

you degenerate piece of shit. Why does he have to have a southern accent? Oh, Tampa's south of the Mason Dixon line. A reverend named Chuck Curry in Portland receives an email from Dr. Cantwell in Tampa, A dentist in Tampa. And here's what the email said.

Hi, fake reverend. You should know being the anti-Christian piece of shit you are that we are going to kill you. Torture first, then death. You will deny Christ just like Judas because you are a coward. Either way, prepare to die. You won't see Christ because you are an immoral degenerate. he's going to jail Dr. Cantwell, then he fixated on an election official in Colorado

named Jenna Griswold. I'm going to edit some of these words because I know Colby can't handle this, but you'll get the picture. You are a degenerate and C word. Right. And you are now the target of your own investigation. Take note because liberal twats like you get raped in alleys by really big black guys that serve our cause.

So you twat, you are going to get raped by at least five N-words, but he said the actual N-word. And do nothing. You are the number one target, you degenerate twat. I know. I know. These are just public figures. He sent over 100 messages to just everyday citizens threatening to kill and grape.

I'm so, I hate that we have to do that. them because they just disagreed with them about Trump politics. Yeah. Right. Threatening someone on the internet, Matt Cox, is a federal crime. And the FBI arrested this loony dentist and he pled guilty. And let's, let me just establish that this guy's not a typical Trump supporter. Not all Trump supporters are like him.

Okay. I understand that. Or dentists. Yeah. Right. Right. And so I don't, and so I don't think what he did was right. But, you know, we talk about the Antifa guy from a couple weeks ago who had just

as much passion on the other side and channeled it in a wrong direction. So I'm not making fun of Trump supporters. If people should be able to vote for the candidate of their choice. Right. How much time are you going to give this guy in prison after he pleads, pleads guilty to the... But he didn't... He didn't do anything. He didn't do anything.

He's all just words. I mean, there's a First Amendment argument to be made here, but you really just can't threaten people. No, no. I disagree. I mean, with the First Amendment, you can say whatever you want, but I mean, with the exception of you're threatening people's lives. First of a question, you're going to let them work on your teeth?

Let them work if I was an inmate. He'd probably be great in the dental, well. Can that be your job in prison if you're a dentist and you go to prison? I don't think so. You can't like that. But they do have the, like it's like the dentist and then the other four guys in the dental, or the little dentist office in prison, they're all inmates. Oh, really?

Yeah, everywhere you go. Like if there's maybe a teacher. and then she'll have five, you know, inmates that are working with. Really, they're teaching the classes. The teachers will just hang out in their office or grading papers, but really they're just talking on the phone and doing social media. Interesting. So.

How much time we given Dr. Cantwell? I feel like stupidity alone. You get, you know, three to five, right? He didn't do anything, though. Right. And I sometimes. Internet loudmouth. You got them in your comments.

I got them in my comments. Internet loud mouths exist. He just sort of crossed some lines, though, with it. We think, like, 24 months to 36 months, somewhere in there. 30 months? What's between that? 30 months? 30 would be between 24 and 36.

I think 30. Did he go to trial? I know. Play guilty. Oh, pled guilty. He came to his senses. 24 months? 24 months.

Think that what you want to go with? Yeah, I feel like he didn't. I feel like the problem is I'm making, in my head, I'm making the argument both ways. One, no, you know, you what you're doing. And then you're taking this guy. He's going to jail. He's closes his practice. But then again, you're an idiot.

Gosh, I'm 18 months. 18 months. 18 months. 18 months. Because you were like 36 and now it's like a half price sale. 24 months. Just like the watch was a half price sale. 24 months.

24. 24. We're going for 24? I'm going 24. He didn't do anything, though. I do think you're terrorizing people, you know? Yeah, 24 months, 24 months. Colby, does he get a bonus for hitting it on the head?

Yes. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, did I hit on the head? 24 months. 24 months. You nailed it. Good job. You know what bothers me about that one?

It's like you would like you were documenting your crime. Wouldn't you know this is a crime? Don't people know this is a crime? Like, do you think there's just like stupidity or you think that guy has like some type of mental illness? But you got a medical school. There's got to be some version of obsessive compulsive disorder going on. You're not stupid. Here's what I find.

The internet and comments, particularly in the internet, bring out the worst in people. Oh, yeah. You really know who people are in the comments. I bet you this guy is drilling the teeth of plenty of liberals who disagree with them about everything. And you know what? I bet he treats them all like a million bucks. It's just something about the internet brings out the worst in people. Because you don't have to look them in the face and get to know them as people.

understand that everyone has a diversity of interest and opinions, that some of which you're going to like, some of which you're not going to like. But I don't know. I just, I have a hunch that some of this is just internet tough guy bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of guys. Yeah, listen, on the phone, I'm a tough guy, bro.

I'm 6-2. I'm like, you hit my face. I'm like, let's talk about that. Jamesaw. Okay, so the FBI has a weird kind of thing that we do. I say we. I'm no longer an agent. where it's not weird, but it comes from a very unusual legal framework where crimes on Native American reservations are automatically federal crimes.

Even if it's a bar fight and assault or you rob the liquor store and get 50 bucks, if it happens on a Native American reservation, the FBI serves on most of these Native American reservations as the de facto detective squad. Don't they have like tribal police? There are tribal police and the FBI works very closely with them. But for reasons unclear to me, and the legal framework, I never worked in Indian Reservation crimes. But I have a lot of friends who did. And the cases are a lot of times very horrifying. I don't know if they're more or less horrifying than a big city police detective working

in a low-income area with a lot of substance abuse would experience. And we don't need to get into the details of those crimes because they get to be pretty rough. But I guess when I'm just setting the stage here is that crimes that would otherwise be investigated by police, if it's occurring on a Native American Indian reservation, then the FBI is often functions as the police detectives in those cases. Okay. Okay. Do you ever serve time with any people who had committed crime, Native American crimes and

something like that? Because you're mostly in Florida. Yeah. No. They have the, they do have a group. They do have a Native American group in Coleman. But, you know, we call them the Pretendians. Because, and there would be maybe 20 or 30.

but what happens is they get tobacco. So if you're Native American Indian, or you say you're Native American Indian, right? And you can become a part of this little group. Then once a month, they give you tobacco to have some kind of ceremony or something. So really it's just a way for these guys to get together and smoke cigarettes.

It's usually all, you know, junkies. And I don't think there's any... We had one guy named DeGeronimo. That was his given name? Yeah, his name is DeGeronimo. And everybody was like, well, you know, he's, well, man, you're definitely indie. And he's like, actually DeGerotomo is like Italian.

He's like, they've got the Geronimo part. So they think he's Indian, but he's not. Did he get to take advantage of the tobacco? Of course, yeah. He was definitely. He was a tattoo artist, actually. He actually put the sound system and, or, it did a bunch of stuff for a lot of big time guys. And then one day got hooked on rock.

And some of these guys, you listen to them and you're like, you were making how much? You were doing what? You were married? You had two kids. And at what point you decided, hey, I said, you know what it would make this that much better? I should start doing drugs. Sometimes success gives the people the image of invincibility.

You know, nothing can touch me. I'm on a roll. So there's a Native American tribe in Washington State known as the Spokane tribe of Indians. That's their name. And the tribe had its own Department of Health and Human Services with a specific fund to help needy children in temporary custody of the tribe. So this tribe, you know, let's say a mom and dad had to go to prison for something or died in a terrible accident. And then that kid doesn't go into the state foster care system. They go into the Spokane tribe of Indians, its own kind of system.

And they hired a woman named Taunee Willow Colvin from Davenport, Washington, to manage the fund for this, for taking care of these kind of these temporary orphans in the care of the care of the tribe. But what she did, the tribe didn't know she was a thief. So what she did, the steal money is she began transferring small amounts of money from the tribe's child welfare account to her own bank account. And then she sees that no one noticed. No one said anything. No one's watching the store, Matt Cox. And so the dollar amounts begin increasing over time until she was transferring thousands of dollars at a time from the child welfare fund to her own account. And she's withdrawing cash from the tribe welfare account also that she's using for her day-to-day spending

money. Eventually, she's fired from her job with the tribe, not because of the theft, but because she was just a really shitty employee. It happens every now and then. But even after her termination, this is crazy. She gets fired. She still has access to the tribe's child welfare bank account, and she continued to make unauthorized transfers after she was fired. The problem is there's someone else in there doing the job right now that actually is taking a look at the bank account sees what happens. And they call the FBI because that's what the FBI does on Native American Indian reservations. They act like detectives, even though her theft was just a tiny little bit over $100,000. Okay. But again, this is money earmarked for the care and feeding of Native American

children. Tawney was criminally charged with the embezzlement. She pleads guilty. And of course, she was ordered to pay restitution to the Spokane tribe of Indians as part of her sentencing, but she was also sentenced to some amount of prison time. And your job, Matt Cox, is to tell me with incredible accuracy how much time she was sentenced to for her $100,000 embezzlement. Did she go trial? No, played guilty. I'm going to say six months because I've got a good – actually, six months I should say a little – Are you saying six months because you think it's six months or because that's a tax?

tactical move for the game? Well, it really, I should say, what, like 11 months? That way I get all the way up to, right, I get a year pretty much either way. Tom's disgusted with this. I want to go with 11 months. I think she probably got six months because I think she probably,

I'll say 11 tact for the tactical advantage. But I think she probably got six months or maybe even even 90 days. She played guilty. It's $100,000. We don't know that she. She had a criminal record, so let's assume she didn't. Like, how funny that you and I who work hard for a living, who also need to evaluate these cases, look at a case and say that $100,000 is nothing.

Well, it's not that it's not like if you and I had a hundred thousand hour windfall in our lives tomorrow. What a day that would be. It would be amazing. But, but what I'm here's the, what I'm thinking of. It's, it's not the, the hundred thousand. I'm thinking the hundred thousand because of the sentencing guidelines. I think 100,000 is great. It is a lot of money.

Yeah, I agree. But what I'm really. really thinking about it is if you're saying, okay, well, Matt, that should be at least a year, maybe two years, the average salary in Florida's, you know, whatever, 80 or 90,000, like, that should be at least a year or two. Okay. But what I'm really thinking about is that even six months is devastating because you lose everything in that six months.

When you get out, your car's been repoed, your credit is trashed. Right. So you've lost your apartment or your house. Like, people can't withstand that six months. and you owe $100,000. So to me, it's so devastating. You don't realize that when you get out, let's say she did three months and they put her in a halfway house for three months.

She can't, her credit's trashed. She can't turn around and go and get a new car because her. Help me understand why does the credit reporting service care if you were incarcerated? Well, they don't, but she's not able to make her car payment anymore. Okay. She's not able to pay her leave. She begins defaulting on outstanding loans, which crushes her credit. Okay.

That doesn't make sense. So let's say within that six months, within two or three months of her trying to get back on her feet. How does she get an apartment? She just had an eviction. How does she get a new car? She just had a repo. How does she get like she's done she's it's devastating. She starts over in a shelter somewhere unless she's got like a sister or a brother that's going to let her sleep on their couch. And then it's kind of hard on them too because they're going to be like do they have a weapon and she's a felon. Do you have a weapon in the house? You have to get rid of your weapon. Well, I'm not getting rid of my weapon. What she can't stay in your house then, you know,

asking a lot of the people who are allowing you to prop on your couch. I guess it's crushing. Okay. Even six months is crushing. All right. So what What is your guess then? 11 months, strategically. So if we hit, if it's six months, do you get the points

for hitting it on the nose? No, no, I don't get it. No, because I'm saying 11. But if it's 11 months, you get the points for hitting it on the nose. Yeah. Okay. The correct answer is one year and one day.

Nice. Yeah. Okay. So you got it. I get a point. Yeah. You got it from within 20%? Within any of the 15% and the Colby rule.

One year and one day. So they give her one year and one day. Why don't you take a second to explain to your audience because they're going to be very confused by that sentence why you say one year and one day and not just one year because if it's one year then she doesn't get any gain time any good time they don't take off a percentage for her good behavior they some judges will say okay i'll give you a one year and one day that way you automatically get good time so they'll knock off three to four months off the rip so instead of one year 12 months she's already she's down to 10 months or really like i think it's nine and half. So you end up serving less time in prison with a sentence of one year and one day than you would for a sentence of one year. Yes. Got it.

All right. We're at five of seven, five of seven right now that you've gotten right. You're kind of really running the table this week. No small thanks to Colby, but whatever. I'm cool with that. Matt Cox, you have spent probably more than anyone I know a disproportionate amount of time with criminals. Yes. Okay.

And so I want to ask you philosophically, are these people born bad? Or did they, did something happen in their lives that made them bad? Or is the whole premise wrong and they're not bad at all? I think it's, you know, I think some people are predisposed to committing crimes, right? Mm-hmm. Genetically? Genetically, I think they're just predisposed to, they're okay with it, right? Yeah.

And some people just, they're just absolutely opposed to it. But I think, like I've said before, I think in the right circumstances, pretty much anybody will. commit a crime, right? Yeah. You know. Your family's hungry. You're going to steal some cheese. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and that's a crime. So some people are born bad. So they're predisposed. They could just end it. You could also think about you could, they could just end up being a CEO of a powerful company. They never had to turn that, that, you know, they never had to turn to a life of crime or

to crime because because they were born in the right situation. they went to college. Things worked out well for them. You're making a nurture argument there, not a nature argument. Those people then are not born bad. No, no. No, I'm still saying they're predisposed. They would.

Had they been born in the right situation, they would have turned. But some people are born in the bad. Some people are not predisposed to crime. And they're born in a shitty situation. And they just work hard. They make the right moves. They get themselves out of it. Like I'm not saying if you're born.

in the projects with a bad set of parents that you're absolutely going to commit to commit crime. No, no, you can get yourself out of it, you know. You can get yourself out of it, but you're probably more likely to commit crime. Okay. Does that make sense? In my opinion, which is based on absolutely nothing other than, you know, maybe 13 years' experience of prison being surrounded by criminals and listening to their stories. And another five years here sitting at this, actually at this exact table. listening to. Yeah, no, it makes sense. And I wasn't being facetious. I do think this is something you would know a lot about because while I've spent 30 years dealing with criminals as well, I'm kind of on the other side of the table trying to just establish what they did. Really, you know, the, I don't get to know them and break bread with them the way that you do. Right. Okay. Interesting. So let's talk about Leland James Vaharo, Vajaro, V-I-J-A-R-R-O of T. I'm going to screw this name up.

Topinish, Tapanish, Washington. Anyway, by age 26, which is called Leith. Thinking this guy's ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower. They may have been here already in that part of the nation. By age 26, this young man had a rap sheet with over a decade of criminal infractions. Arrest, assault, arson, firearms offenses, theft, domestic violence. There's an argument to be made that this guy, something went sideways in his youth, or he was born bad.

Right. Okay. So last year, he breaks into his brother's home. Okay. And steals 13 firearms and a suppressor. And this theft ignites a dangerous series of events, Matt Cox. Two days later, the police respond to reports of gunfire coming from a moving vehicle. It was Leland.

It was Leland. Officer stopped the car. Leland, still armed, starts running with a gun, runs into a near-nearland. by home and barricades himself, like a home invasion. Okay. The cops surround the house. They take cover. Leland comes out in the backyard and begins opening fire on the police using one of the stolen guns. He stands on a pallet, taking aims at the officers and continuing to fire. The patrol vehicles are being riddled by bullets. Thank heavens no officers were hit. Okay. Leland then runs into a second house and barricades himself

inside that house. Hostage negotiators speak to him for hours, coaxing him to surrender, which he does later that night with no additional bloodshed. Okay. Now, the firefight and the home invasions happen to occur on the Yakima Nation Indian Reservation, and because federal lands and tribal jurisdiction are involved, this becomes the FBI's problem to unwind. federal charges and Leland ultimately pleads guilty to assaulting officers and multiple firearms charges. The judge takes a look at Leland's conduct, but guess what he's always looking at. Also looking at is Leland's criminal history, okay, which as we talked about is a mile long. And he also had a history of gang affiliations. So you take a look at Leland and you say, was he born to terrorize others or did something go wrong in his youth that made him do so? And that's one of the things the judge probably had to think about when he laid down a sentence on Leland for this particular crime,

but also taking a look at the totality of his young life at age 26 and the idea that this guy may very well have been born bad. What do you think that sentence was, Matt Cox? 40 years. 40 years? Yeah. He's shooting that to me that's that's like, I mean, that's attempted murder. You're shooting at police officers. He wasn't trying to scare him.

He would have been fired in the air. 40 years. I don't think we've ever had a 40-year crime on the show together. I mean, I think that's reasonable. He's of multiple convicted felon. A long rap sheet. He's got multiple weapons. He broke in.

Who knows if any of those were fully automatic. Two different houses. Yeah. Two home invasions, fleeing, alluding, shooting at, like this is not. This is not. No, police were hit. He had the cars. I mean, the lowest I would go was 30 years.

He's not a good marksman. Not a good person or a good marksman. The lowest I would go would be 30 years. And I can't imagine you give him 30 years. Like to me, this is somebody who like, look, you, look, listen, it's. You're making a born bad argument here. I mean that this guy just needs to be taken out of society. That he's irredeemable.

There's no, there's no, he's not going to have the Matt Cox trajectory where you learn your lessons and you come out of prison, a better person. Yeah, man, I'm not. targeting people trying to kill them and I'm not kicking people's door. My point, though, is that you believe in rehabilitation. No, I believe in rehabilitative. This guy's had plenty of chances to rehabilitate. What are you talking? He's not a, this is, this is not something.

Look, you look, you know, a lion just does what he does, right? Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. But you just can't let them roam the countryside, you know. And it's sad because, hey, he's just doing what's natural. He's just doing what, you know, and this guy has had many, many chances. and he's a violent person and he's somebody that you just can't have in society.

You know, he's had his chances. It sounds like he's had five or six chances. I don't know if you said exactly how many times he's been in and out. Yeah, I don't even have the number, but I mean, convictions and arrests for assault, arson, firearms, offenses, thefts, domestic violence, you know, also affiliated with a gang. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I mean, as much as I want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. No, I'm liking this hanging judge Matt Cox. This is a new Matt Cox. It's not a new Matt Cox.

I just have no, I just have very little sympathy for violence and for, you know, piercing the sanctity of someone's home. Like, I should feel safe in my home. I should be sitting on my couch watching, you know, watching breaking bad. And some guy kicks in my door. Home invasion is terrifying. Terrifying. Yeah, you did nothing wrong. You're just sitting there watching a new show.

40 years. 40 years. Yeah. All right. Well, I did my best. The correct answer is 16 and a half. half years. That's some bullshit, man. That's some bullshit. That is, that is, did he go to trial? No. Oh, yeah. But even if I took that into consideration, it'd be 30 years. 16 years. Come on. 16 years. I know guys are robbed banks and got 25 years. Yeah. I, I don't disagree with you. I, I just love hearing your thought process.

What's, what's his name, Big Herk? Big Hurk got 10 years. Robin a bank. Man, this guy got 16 and a half for being, for shooting a cop cars. Oh, hell no. Uh-uh. Okay. No, listen, you know, the body cams. Mm-hmm.

Listen, I get no more enjoyment in my life than watching the body cams of these cops where these people crack the window and they're just like, they don't want, well, no, why are you pulling me over and I don't have to give you my idea? Listen, man, we're going to break the window and drag you out. Like, these cops have. always end the same way, right? And these guys, they'll argue with them. And I'm, we're talking about, I'm watching the video and I'm hearing them by the second time, they're like, you know, I pulled you over for this reason. I'm allowed. I have a lot of stop. I'm allowed. You have to know, you have to know. And I'm already going, and Jess will walk by and I'm like, break the window, drag her out. Break the window. Break the window. We're not taught. And then it goes on for five minutes. They're trying to play. This person's, they know, they heard you, bro. I'm now mad at the officer. Yeah. Why you take him so long? Why haven't we dragged this chick out? Why have we put this guy in handcuffs? Why haven't we?

You know, and sometimes I'm like, wait for backup. We're going to need three guys to get this guy out. Let me speak to your supervisor. Let me speak to your supervisor. I want to supervise. That's funny. All right. Last night at dinner, Colby asked me if there was a theme to the stories this episode.

And it's been a bit of a potpourri. But the next four stories, I do think, are themed. And if we actually reach back to the story about the guy who did the affinity fraud with his Facebook friends, we may be able to come up with a theme for this episode as being kind of the danely. of social media or the dark side of social media. You on Snapchat? Are you on Snapchat? No.

Yeah. I have it. I never go on it. You are on Snapchat. Oh, am I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually have somebody that's, you know, trying to get us monetize on Snapchat. I like, people send me stuff.

And I have no, I'm like, that's me. And then I'll call me, I'll be like, dude, how many TikTok accounts do we have? You know, we got like five of them. I don't like, we do? I haven't never seen this one. Yeah, Snapchat's a bit of a mystery to me. I think the appeal of Snapchat to begin with was the idea that I send you a text message, it disappears later.

So if I were to send you something kind of racy or that they don't want to see, it doesn't give you the option to save it and show all the other kids in eighth grade. It strikes me as a place where a lot of really young people are, like almost like a gayly drug, like the place where, you know, maybe even if you were a bad guy looking to me 13-year-old Snapchat would be the marketplace to do that. I'm not advocating that, but it's going to be kind of a theme of these stories. Some of which, dear audience, have some disturbing quality. So please keep that in mind if you're driving around with your kids.

Okay. Let's go to St. Paul, Minnesota. We have 38-year-old Timmy Gebhart, 38-year-old Timmy. He works as a normal office job, lived in a normal house. But no one knew, Matt Cox, that he had a secret life as a Snapchat fiend. Okay. Timmy used AI to create 66 different Snapchat profiles, pretending to be teenage kids. Okay.

And how old was he? 38. Okay. Did you say that? I did. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. I say a lot of stuff.

You don't have to focus on it all. Yeah, that's odd. It's odd. 38 years. Yeah, weird hobby. And from there, he would go and befriend boys and girls. on Snapchat and eventually turn the conversation sexual. He would solicit nude photos and videos from children.

And if the child complied, Timmy would then demand more photos and more videos. And if the boys and girls resisted and said, no, he would threaten to release the previous videos to all of their schoolmates unless they complied. Kind of a extortion thing. Yeah. Right. Then he started sending them graphic videos of people getting. murdered in horrendous ways to threaten and intimidate his teenage victims to become his basic

online slaves sending him more sexual content. Okay. Timmy's not demanding money the way that some of these extortion scams are. He's seeking sexual photos and videos from these scared adolescence. Yeah. Okay. He escalated his demands that local kids meet up with him and forced several of them to meet up with him in person and had relations with them in his car under the threats of public embarrassment

and physical harm. Okay. So it's not just online nonsense. He's doing real live bad stuff. Yeah. After receiving a complaint from one victim's mother of the FBI Minneapolis office opens a case and gets to work kind of piecing together the spider web of profiles. One thing I know about Snapchat is that even though they're very, very cooperative with law enforcement. They have a pretty decent and robust record of, you know, if the police or the FBI calls them and produces the appropriate subpoena or search warrant or whatever, they're going to give them the keys to the kingdom, you know, profiles, direct messages, IP addresses, you know, it's all there in Snapchat servers.

And so by the time it's done, the FBI had identified a dozen victims under the age of 16, of actual flesh and blood victims that they identified who had been either extorted or met up with him. him, with the youngest being 12 years old, a little girl. So Timmy is arrested and charged with extortion and child exploitation charges. He pleads guilty. What do you sentence Timmy to? I was going to say 30 years, but because he pled guilty? Yeah. 20?

I mean, I don't think that he deserves 20. I think he deserves 30, you know. It's funny that the federal system. is not as harsh on violence. I mean, and to me, the forcing those kids to it, then that's. So I would say that they used probably looking at 30, probably looking at 30 and he took 20. Part of the reason I'm, he did plead guilty. Yeah, he pled guilty.

But even if he pledged it, I don't think he would have pled to 30 because he would have been like, most people, if you give them that much time, they're like, I'll just go to trial. You know what I'm saying? So that's why I'm also kind of thinking 20. boy he's got to have a hard hard time yeah like the other prisoners are going to take it out on him yeah and I don't know that there

it's not like that he's going to get well that I don't know no no because he physically yeah this wasn't he did meet up with a handful of him he's not going to a low he's probably going to like a medium he might not be able to to leave the unit in a medium really oh I mean like

people like to beat them up yeah they actually have special units where it's like the where they put mental guys that have mental issues, which heat has, or they're in danger and they actually put them in that unit and they eat last so that everybody else eats. And then when they cleared out, they call them last so that they can go get in line, get their food and go straight back to the unit. Yeah. Wow. Because that's the median.

But the low, there's so many of them. Yeah. Yeah, I'm 20. 20 seems reasonable. 20, 25? 20. Let's say 20 because I know a guy that went to trial that had flown over here to meet with a young boy from Germany. Yeah, you told that story. I think he got 25. Did he get 20 or 25? But I think he went to trial because he just felt like he hadn't done anything wrong. Yeah. This guy pled guilty. Let's say 20. I'm saying. I'm saying. I'm not trying to influence you either way that he's 38 years old. So we're, you know, you're saying that 20 years, you know, assuming he serves every day. of it and that one serves every day. He'd be in his early 50s

when he got out. Okay. So 20 years? Yeah. Okay. Correct answer? What? 30 years. He played guilty to 30 years. Well, again, he played guilty and got 30 years. The federal system, as you goddamn well know, doesn't tell you what the sentence is when you plead guilty. That is solely up to the judge. The prosecutor can recommend an absolute number of years or give you a guidelines range and the judge is going to be like, I don't care. It's 30 years. I got a granddaughter. Yeah. I said 30, too.

But I just feel I feel like most of these guys they go to they they they yeah he go he's and he is here's a thing too is like he's so guilty too like the the documentation is there like I don't know how you would 66 different Snapchat profiles he created. Yeah yeah no he's a weirdo. He's a weirdo. Yeah. Crazy. So parents keep an eye on your kids Snapchat usage. Do you remember the guy who. So I think.

Wade. I have a buddy named Wade who runs a channel called Crime and Entertainment. And I want to say he interviewed the guy that – and you'll remember this because it was – this was back in like the early 80s, and he was caught – like, he was literally the – there was news at the airport. So here's what happened was this guy's son was taking, let's say, karate. Okay. His karate instructor became fascinated with his son who's like 12 or something, 13. He kidnaps him. He takes him three or four states away.

Eventually, I want to say the FBI, they track him down. Somebody tracks him down. And they return the son. And then they're bringing the, you know, the defendant or whatever. they're bringing the defendant back to, I want to say maybe it was Florida. I don't know if it was Florida. They bring them back and they bring them,

this is back in the 80s, right? I remember this. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So they bring him back through the airport. Well, the father knows he's flying in. So the father brings a gun. Yeah.

To the airport and is on the pay phone. So you said these things pay phones. So he's on the pay phone. And as the defendant or criminal, whatever you want to call them, as these two. deputy or two police officers they're walking the guy right they're walking him he's handcuffed and they're walking him through the airport and the media was there like to film the arrival of this bad guy who's

being transported yeah and they're actually like happening on camera yeah there so as just literally really was an amazing shot yeah there as the guys coming towards them and just as he they he walks right by the father who's at the pay phone with his face facing the other way the father twists around with the gun and I mean it's actually an amazing shot yeah and he bam and shoots the guy right in the head and they shoots him a couple times drops the gun and they arrest him and he he ends up killing the guy uh but yeah that so Wade actually interviewed that guy the dad the dad what do you get I think like 20 years or something okay I don't know what he got maybe it was 10 I mean not sure I'd take that case to cry out I take my chance of the jury yeah that's that's

I wonder. You'd have to give me a really sweet video for me to not. We know the prosecutor was not excited about rolling the dice with 12 common citizens given that fact scenario. Yeah, you get, you get, yeah, you get a, shoot, you get one or two. You only need one or two parents on the, who are going to be like, yeah. Yeah, he got a nice cell with a ghost bed. Yeah. All right, let's stay with Snapchat.

Because I want this to be a cautionary tale for your viewers, especially the ones with kids. There's an unknown person on Snapchat. He's the name Katie Anderson. I think, you know, if you took a look at the case, you would see that Katie Anderson was clearly a guy, but you're never going to believe who Katie really was, Matt Cox. Okay. A 13-year-old girl named Rachel was contacted out of the blue by Katie Anderson, and it took no time at all before Katie had manipulated the child into sending sexually explicit photos of young Rachel doing things to herself. Okay. Rachel didn't want to do it, but this guy behind the Katie name told her that if she didn't comply, he would do bad things to her family.

And Rachel went along with it because she was worried about the safety of her family. And this exploitation of this kid went on for months. Eventually, our victim tells someone who's kind of aware of this enslavement, really, this went on for a long time, who then that third party contacts the FBI. who interviews little Rachel about what's occurring. Rachel tells the truth. And so the FBI goes to work to figure out who the heck this Katie Anderson is. In the process, they identify two other little girls who are going through the same torment of coercive threats

in exchange for sexually explicit videos and photos. But who was Katie Anderson? The IP address points to a home in Edmond, Oklahoma, occupied by 31-year-old, Cy Kuramula, middle name Kumar. The agents execute a search warrant at Sai's house and take his home and searching his house, take his telephone. And on the phone, they find hundreds of photos of young girls, including the three victims that the FBI already knew about. Sye was residing in the U.S. on a temporary work visa from India since 2015.

No. Yeah. And the FBI agents were arresting him, he screams. Just give me one more opportunity. I will never do it again. Sy was charged with sexual exploitation of children and pled guilty. So, Cy, when he finishes his sentence, is going back to India, which I think is always a judgment factor in the minds of the judges on how much time are they going to have the U.S. taxpayers pay for his care and fees. feeding. And so he's done, he had lots and lots of pictures. We know, we've identified three

girls he had done this to, but he never met WEP with any of them in person. Okay. So a little slightly different fact scenario than the last one. And he pled guilty. And he pled guilty. And he's going back to India afterwards. How much time are you going to give him? Different judge, of course. This is horrible. Yeah. So I'm torn between what he should get and what he probably got. Three victims. Three, I mean, probably a lot more victims, but three that they were able to really nail down because he had a ton of pictures of other kids that we don't really know what the Genesis was.

Yeah. What's a safe bet? Let's say, let's say 18 years. Okay. Your answer is 18 years. 17 years. 17 years. 17 years.

We just gave me one year discount. Seven. Good behavior. 17. 17 years. All right. Let's move this along because I hate the story, even though I brought it. Correct answer, 35 years in prison.

Do you see what I'm saying? Like he got 35, the other guy got 30? Like, what does this is? I know. That's the X factor here is the judge. You know, the judges, different judges, now that the sentencing guidelines are just sort of advisory, they can do whatever they want, but they use these guidelines. Some are more offended by these things. Some are he got 35 years.

The previous guy. I don't feel bad for him. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Good riddance. Well, he ended up serving his life in prison. He died in prison? No. Indian man commits suicide in U.S. jail after 35-year sentence.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a life sentence. Yeah. Could be happy. Oh, well. Yeah.

I was thinking 17 and you release him back on the Indian population. Exactly. All right. Let's do another social media story. Okay. I want to hammer this point home for your viewers to keep an eye on the kids. When Cassandra woke up. in her home in Fort Bend, Texas.

She was alarmed to find her 13-year-old daughter, Nicole, missing from the bedroom. Nicole's just gone. Cassandra calls the cops. The police took their report, and while they're taking the report, they see a car dropping Nicole off down the street from her home. The girl seems to be unharmed, and one set of officers escorts Nicole into her house, while the other set of officers detains and questions the mysterious man in the car. They're able to stop him.

All right. Okay. This sounds familiar. Does this sound familiar to you? Go ahead. Sorry. If we've done the story, let me know. I thought I reviewed all previous episodes.

A few weeks ago, she met a guy, a 25-year-old guy on Instagram named Bryce Stone. We did a story about a boy that this happened to. Yeah, it was a boy. Very similar fact scenario, right? Where the cops come, the boy's missing. This boy came home. This was an, that was a nighttime one. This was a morning one.

She, you know, this happened in the morning. But yeah, very similar fact scenario. Anyway, this guy, a few weeks ago, this is what Nicole says. Nicole stories, I might have got on Instagram. His name was Bryce Stone. He was 25 years old. She said, again, she's 13. After talking for a few days online, she begins to sneak out of the house at midnight while her mom's asleep.

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That's ghostbed.com slash Cox promo code Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. And Bryce would pick her up and drive her to his house in Katie, Texas. I've been to Katie. It's a nice, nice supper. I'd like Katie.

I would have moved there if I had. have been transferred to Houston. And then they would have rough sex involving handcuffs and other restraints at his house in Katie. She said this occurred 15 times. Okay. She said he used to take pictures of her in restraints while they were together. He even posted a photo of 13-year-old Nicole restrained with purple handcuffs on his Instagram page, but her face was obscured. So if you went to Bryce's Instagram page.

At the same time, while Nicole is telling them this story, there's another set of cops interviewing Bryce. His name's actually Bryce Flickinger once they finally identified him. Stone sound made up. Yeah, you'd be shocked to learn. He lied to this little girl about what his last name was, and he was, in fact, 25 years old. But he refuses to answer any police questions. I ain't talking. I'm not saying anything anybody.

But they're able to seize his phone and give it to the FBI for forensic examination. And guess what they find on the phone? all the evidence they needed. They have pictures of this 25-year-old Bryce, having doing things with 13-year-old Nicole, with every variety your nightmare mind could imagine. We don't need to get into the specifics. Sometimes Nicole was restrained with purple handcuffs,

just like she had said and just like they had the picture. And they also found more videos capturing the two on Snapchat. The FBI partners with the Fort Bend Police to bring federal charges against Bryce for production and distribution of illegal child images, let's say. Meanwhile, FBI victim specialists are helping Nicole and her mom kind of get this girl the counseling she needs. Bryce Flickinger, also known as Bryce Stone, pleads guilty. How much he got to sentence this guy to? one victim ongoing relationship harvested this girl on the internet but again and again and again so he meets her he manipulates her to come out he's not threatening he's not taking the photos

and threatening or i'll hurt people he's being seductive they had no threats and no threats but um you know it's this is kind of a a rougher sexual romance you know to the extent that it was i mean he's manipulating a 13 year old girl yeah yeah but uh and lots of pictures and a picture of her posted on Instagram with her face obscured. And kind of super graphic pictures. I don't need to get into the details, but you get it. No criminal history on young Bryce. He's 25 years old.

I'm still somewhere between 15 and 20, only because she wasn't threatened. She's coming out of the house over and over again. She's not terrified. This is not happening at the tip of a. There was no coercion involved other than the fact that she's legally too young to consent to this type of activity. Yeah. 17 years. Okay.

17 years is your guess? I'm probably low again. You comfortable with that guess? It doesn't sound like you're comfortable. I'm not comfortable with anything since the other guy is these 30, 35. Like, these are outrate, but I just- Judges be wild and man. They do their own thing.

I just feel like those guys were like they were threatening and they were, and I feel like this is, I mean, I'm granted, And she's absolutely way too young to be making these decisions on her own. Yeah. She could have told somebody. She could have said something. But so I'm going to say 17 years. Okay. Correct answer?

10 years. 10 years. Yeah, I would have never come close to 10. Yeah, me neither. I would have been my guess. Kobe, you find him? Actually, it was kind of... He's got an Instagram profile still that never got taken down.

I did find another guy, another teacher with the same name in Ohio. Poor guy. Final question. final final final story rather okay we're at 12 what's the score right now what is the score five of 11 so this is this is it this is it so i've got five you need six of 12 to win to pass this is a good one too i like this story a lot i like the story a lot so um we ever talked about fbi legal attaches no okay an fbi legal attache at the FBI we called them Legats. And the assistant legal attache is the A-LAT.

So we have Leagatz and Alats. And what that is, and people ask me this all the time because they have a real misunderstanding of what it is, they're the FBI agents stationed overseas. Okay. Okay. So they're still FBI agents? They're FBI special agents. Okay.

But the thing is, and what a lot of people don't understand, what the, I think there's actually a TV show about FBI, you know, international or something like that, that Leagueats and ALATs, it's really an embassy job. They're working in the embassy, and they don't have any authority overseas. Yeah. But again, you would never know this from watching TV in the movies where they're kicking indoors and like shoving Russian mobster's faces. Right. Yeah, exactly.

It's an important job and it's critical. But nearly every embassy of every civilized nation on planet Earth of the U.S. embassy there has an FBI agent station there, at least one legat and then one or more. A-LATs working with them. And what they do is they facilitate international investigations. If we have a mutual legal assistance treaty with London, I say, I send a lead from my office in Jacksonville, Florida to the FBI office, the FBI League at in London, saying, can you please find out who lives at this address? I have a case where a victim sent a lot of money through international, you know, a bunch of cash and a romance scam or whatever to this particular house. Can you find out who's there?

Now that FBI agent doesn't really have the authority to conduct investigations in England, but what they do is they reach out to their counterparts who they have developed relationship with at Scotland Yard or the London police or whatever and say, hey, pursue it to our treaty. Can you find out who lives at this? And they assign it to an agent who go, a detective who goes and gets that information, documents it, hands it off to the league at the embassy, who then sends it back to me in Jacksonville and now I have information in my case. Makes sense? Yeah. It also goes the other way where if that guy in Scotland Yard says, Hey, can you tell me, can you go in, we need an interview to be conducted of this guy who lives in Tampa named Colby.

He's a real shifty character and he's been in touch with some bad people here. We want you to ask these dozen questions. That Scotland Yard guy can't just come here and do that. Right, right? He's got no authority. So he hands that lead to the league app, who then sets a lead for me. It arrives at me. I go to Colby's house.

I knock on his door. I introduce myself. I'm conducting an investigation pursuant to the mutual legal assistance treaty with the United Kingdom. I have some questions for you. And so I was always the guy who handled the international investigations for the FBI in Honolulu and Jacksonville involving white-collar crimes. And I volunteered for that duty because I thought I was going to be flying around the world testifying in foreign cases. It never worked out. And different countries have different requirements.

Like if you're doing a case for like Japan and I did a bunch of those, they need you to like stamp the back of the document and sign it. So every country has different requirements for what, what. how to collect evidence for them, and I had to keep track of all them. This is a story of a success story of an FBI league at. You ever heard of an online gaming system called Roblox? What do you know about Roblox? Nothing, but I have heard about it, and I've heard that a lot of kids are being contacted by, it's basically by predators, are able to easily interact with young kids.

That's all I know. You up on Roblox, Colby? Yeah, I would say. It's a game, right? Is it kind of like a game? It's a gaming system. You can basically do anything. Like, I could build a football game, a basketball game, a role-playing game.

Like, you can do anything. It's a tool where you can create your own video game and then have people play it with you. But there's lots of it are in our chat room. It's also a chat room. And giving and taking, which has been a real problem. Who's the to catch a predator guy? I met him once at a conference. Chris Hansen.

Chris Hansen has been all over Roblox lately on his social media for being kind of a, a cesspool of problems involving child predators. Yeah, so functions like a social network. We got a guy named Austin Hibbert, 25-year-old guy from Tallahassee, Florida, our state capital, Matt Cox. He was very active on Roblox. And on that platform, he met a 13-year-old girl, we'll call Christina, in the northern European nation of Estonia, former Soviet Republic. Okay. they begin talking.

Austin moves the conversation off of Roblox onto Snapchat and Discord, and he pushes the dialogue into a graphic sexual conversation. At first, Christina in Estonia is resistant, explaining that, hey, I'm only 13, but Austin was very persistent and broke the little girl down, and the two began sexting and exchanging nude photos with each other.

The story we've told a thousand times here, breaks your heart. I read the sex exchanges, the text exchanges between them, and it's super graphic. We don't need to get into it here. But let your most perverted imagination run wild and you're in the right neighborhood. Okay.

So these two are talking for a year and develop this like relationship with each other. Again, 25 year old guy, 13 year old girl. He's in Tallahassee. She's in Estonia. And they begin talking about how wonderful it would be if they could be together. Okay. And so they begin making plans for Austin to fly to Estonia to have relations with young Christina. And they're talking about.

about how they're going to get around the prying eyes of Christina's overbearing mother in Estonia. We've got to figure out how to get around mom. And so Austin applies for a U.S. passport to make this trip, gets his U.S. passport, books a – find out where Christina lives, hops on one of the vacation rental websites, and books a vacation rental, a few doors down from her so he can just walk down the street to see him and buys a plane ticket from Tallahassee to Atlanta to Amsterdam to Estonia. He's so excited, Matt Cox. This is actually happening.

He's making big moves here to make this happen. Now, Austin did not know this, but right before his trip, Christina's mother in Estonia searches the little girl's phones and reads all about their plans to be together. She contacts the local police who contact the FBI's legal attache in Estonia, and that's the FBI agent in the U.S. Embassy. The legal attache loops in my former colleagues at the FBI in Tallahassee, which is a satellite office of the Jacksonville office, so I did a lot of work in Tallahassee. And that's how it works. So the Tallahassee FBI agents were able to surveil Austin as he boards his first flight, the first leg of his flight in Tallahassee. They put agents on the plane to follow him. He flies from Tallahassee to

Atlanta. He's making the trip. And they decide to arrest him in Atlanta before he gets on his next flight. Okay. A search of Austin's phone confirms and reveals all the text messages. And he has a suitcase basically filled with condoms. He's arrested and transported back to Tallahassee, charge of the variety of international child exploitation charges. He pleads guilty. So big win for the FBI, big win for the FBI's legal attache program. This is the way it's supposed to work when everything works perfectly. How much time, though, are we giving 25-year-old Austin Hibbert of Tallahassee, Florida?

I mean, I think, like I would think 25 years, but here's my problem. is that, like you had said before, like he goes to trial, we got to bring this little girl over here, mom. We have a police officer. These cases are a pain in the neck. Right. You have to bring all these people over here. So maybe that worked to his advantage to the course of 10 years or something. Maybe you got 15.

I want to say you got 10 to 15 years in between 10 to 15 years. Let's say 10. 10? International. This is a year-long courtship, a lots of photos. Again, not trying to influence it either way, just letting you, I want you to add the context. 13 years. You think this guy got 13 years for trying to go to Estonia?

It's won victims, but it is a lot of photos. The photos are a big deal, but he also pled guilty. And it's an international case, and it's a prop pain in the ass. And then they're like, God, what if anybody doesn't get on the plane, if, you know, it's expensive. Like, okay, well, 13 years, 13 years? Okay. You keep saying the word 13. So we're going to go with 13 years?

Do you comfortable with that? I'd like to win the game for once. Oh, we got to wait. We got to wait. Give a second. It's going to be a hour. Now, they're pretty quick. Been lucky since at the house it was all the time.

You know, in football games, you ever heard the term icing the kicker? No. The idea is before the kicker is getting ready to kick the field goal that's going to win the game, the defensive team calls a timeout. Basically calls all their timeouts back to back to back to back to create a long window of time where the kickers just sort of standing there in the field, looking at the ball, looking at the thing, second-guessing himself,

doubting himself, feeling bad about himself. and they extend that as long as possible with commercial breaks and timeouts to, so this kicker who's full of piss and vinegar when he steps on the field is just sitting there with his own thoughts and feelings and inadequacies. And so Colby thought that this is a little like icing the kicker, the fact that we took a break to have you use the bathroom before you would win or lose this game. So when last we posed this question to you, you were at 13 months for this guy. No, 13 months, 13 years.

13 years for this guy who's going on his way to Estonia when he was caught in transit by the FBI to deflower a 13-year-old girl. God. Okay. 15 years. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that I want to just make sure that you and I are on the same page about where this thing stands. Because let's call it what it is, Matt Cox. There is a lot of pressure on this question for you.

This is the difference between you winning or losing. I mean, the other ones with fun and games, we got to laugh it off. But this is it. This is the field goal that's going to win the Matt Cox Super Bowl. And so I'm curious now that you've had time to reflect upon it, go to the bathroom, get some caffeine in your system, powder your nose, do your hair. How much time do you think this? I did none of that, by the way. How much time you think this guy's going to get for on his way to Estonia being caught with lots and lots of photos with this girl in situations that would make her parents flip out?

15 years. 15 years? Yeah. Okay. Last question, so I want to make sure you're comfortable with this. And so I'm going to ask you, is that your final answer, Matt Cox? Yes. Yeah, the correct answer.

Kobe, you want to tell him or should I? Just do the motion of the field ball. 11 years. 11 years. 11, how off am I? I was 13.75. So 13 was good. 15 is not.

Fucking bullshit. distance. You were almost there, man. They were almost there. They caught a timeout, and you made the field goal at a timeout. We iced the kicker. We iced the kicker. So final score, Colby? Five of 12. Five of 12, which I believe is less

than 50%. But thank you for playing, Matt Cox. We enjoyed having you on your own show. You're horrible. We have some consolation prizes for him. Colby, tell him what he's won. Some rice errone, the San Francisco treat. Some hamburger helper. It's good without the hamburger. What are your thoughts? How do you feel? I feel like I was, I feel manipulated. I was at 13. I was on, I was going to win. I was good.

You're at 13. You're like 13, 13. And then that guy started mowing outside. We were talking about it while you were in the bathroom. That, uh, that this is it. Was he going to stick with his guns or is he going to, um, going to go to show? I was stuck with my guns, which you did the whole thing. I recapped what we knew. Again, I know your audience didn't have to sit here while, while we waited five minutes for you to powder your nose or do whatever the hell you were doing in the bathroom. But we. needed to. I needed that recap for you. All right. Are we done here? Are we done? I think we're We need to know what Tom's doing now. Well, I, I, I, I, we'll get there. Really, honestly, you know, it's funny is, uh, um, yeah, one of that I was to say last night at dinner. One of the more interesting parts was when you were actually going over the different cases that you're working on right now. Those are good. I mean, you can't talk about them, but you were like, there was like, a couple were anti-climactic. Like, you were like, I'm waiting. and then I was like, ah, and then, but some of them were pretty good, right? Like, some really good. It was like, yeah. Some are some good results. Right. I have some cases that have that I investigated and shepherded

them to my former colleagues at the FBI. And they have been charged. The bad guy has pled guilty on a crime that I was the genesis of as a private investigator. And I'm going to wait until their sentence. I'm going to be bringing those in. So over the course the next few months, I hope to bring in some actual private investigative cases of cases that I investigated since my retirement with the FBI. Are you going to bring them in like we're going to talk? They'll just be one of the game. We'll do the game.

There'll be questions in the game. And that first question that I, as first story I give you, is usually a somewhat autobiographical one of a case I investigated. I consider these cases that I investigated. The FBI would not have opened up that case and the bad guy would not have been in prison but for private investigator Tom Simon and having a client. Well, it's good because you're able to go in there. And it's exactly the way they would have done it themselves.

It's a quick reason. And that's the value I add I have for the clients. Might as well address that issue right now. I'm a private investigator now since I've retired from the FBI. And honestly, I'll tell you the truth and why I'm more than happy to buy you dinner anytime I'm in town is that I've been getting a lot of calls from people who have learned about my services from the Matt Cox show. And so I can't thank you enough for that. Even though you don't pay me anything to be on the show, you never cover my hotel. So what they call ancillary benefits.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm able to monetize my appearances on the show by being able to help out your fans, who hopefully eventually will become my fans also. But there certainly have become my clients and people that I care deeply about. And I work in all 50 states and my expertise is fraud, but I do all types of investigations. And I will always make the time for a call from a Matt Cox fan for a free consultation. So if you need a private investigator, know someone who does, I'm here for you. And I do appreciate it.

I do love your fans. And I do read every comment they make about us. and they're incredibly kind and almost embarrassingly kind. And they love what we're doing together. And this is a fantastic show. It's a fantastic friendship. And it's a fantastic business partnership I have with you. You also do speaking engagements too.

I do. Have you got any speaking engagements from here? That's a good question. I don't think so. But I think there's some social proof involved where if someone is considering hiring me, they begin searching me. And eventually they're going to find either your show or episodes of our show. And I think that shows that I can be kind of, you know, we have funding.

that we laugh and have a good time, that kind of aspect of my personality, that doesn't always come out in my Instagram when I'm reporting on these horrific crimes. And so, yeah, and so I have some speeches that I give to organizations and companies. The one that's been most popular lately is how to use FBI behavioral science for business success, whether that's sales or to make your managers better managers. I was just hired by a big company for a giant conference with a bunch of Fortune 500 executives where they just want me to get up there and tell entertaining FBI stories for an hour. They don't need some grand lesson. And I have some pretty hilarious stories to tell that I've told here and elsewhere that I'm doing. And I also have programs for CPAs and regulatory investors and how to do better financial crime investigations. I have a business program on how to make sure your business is safe from fraud and embezzlement.

And so anyone out there who is watching the Matt Cox show who either hire speakers for conferences or wants to introduce me the person who does. Matt does speeches, I do speeches. Book us both. Wouldn't that be amazing? Anyway, you can also follow me on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Simon Investigations is my name there. And just once again, I love coming on the show. Thank you so, so much for having me on.

Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified videos just like this. Also, if you want to follow and subscribe to Tom's social medias or contact him, you can go into the description box, click on the links that will be there. Shoot over there. You can follow him and subscribe.

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Thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. See you. Be cool.